The Guardian Jaeger
by Michael-656
Summary: Jack is a rising star in the Jaeger program, the only problem? His attitude. He just can't seem to meet someone Drift-Compatible. Tooth is a veteran mechanic, made pilot, and finds herself teamed with Jack and his Jaeger; 'Blue Winter.' Will they become something more, or will they all go extinct? (I do not own anything. Easter Eggs of my favored movies throughout.) Now an AU.
1. Dedication Page

I would like to thank God, my Girlfriend, and those who have taken time to read my rough edges.

Lastly I'd like to thank necro-wulf my Editor.

I have no doubts that this story will become something great.

Will post as soon as my chapters are up to snuff.

Until then happy reading, and live the adventure.

656 Out.


	2. Transfer 98

April 6th 2035

Hawaii

Pearl Harbor

0850

_Oh Hawaii, ah what's not to love? Sand, Sun, Surf, plenty of lovely fishing. _

_Oh, and then there's also the twenty-five hundred ton monsters that love crawling out of the sea and busting up our city. So there's that._

_/_

A young man of about 19 sat beside a door with the illustrious title of "**MARSHAL SHANE" **stamped into it. He was dressed in a powder blue jumpsuit that was stretched along his tall, thin, but spryly muscled frame. His eyes were a matching bright blue, and his hair was an unnatural white. His eyebrows, paradoxically, were dark.

For some reason he was reminded of a child in school and being sent to the principle. 'Why?' That was what he wanted to know really. Too bad he didn't figure it out before his train of thought was interrupted by a huge roar from an Australian that answered it for him. "HE NEARLY KILLED BOTH OF US, MARSHAL!"

That was why; he was in trouble.

Again.

He couldn't help the smirk playing on his lips, despite the forthcoming trouble. In his defense he thought his Co-pilot Aster was being put under too much stress, so he wanted to mix things up in the Jaeger simulator. Trying their mettle with a never ending survival gauntlet seemed like a great way to decompress.

How was he supposed to know the techs had upgraded the software to actually mimic the real strike force of a Kaiju? By the time the techs managed to drag them out of the simulator pod, they had several sprains and contusions and quite a bit of systematic burning from areas of the mech that were destroyed.

He was so deep into his memories he didn't even notice his CP stalk out. In point of fact he wasn't paying much attention to anything until he heard a person clear their throat. He looked up into the stern face of Marshal Shane, formidable leader of the Hawaiian Jaeger regiment. For once Thomas felt his throat contract in a gulp.

"Thomas 'Jackie-Boy' Iceland." Marshal Shane grumbled as he read over his file, again. Thomas couldn't help but break parade rest and quietly protest.

"I just prefer 'Jack' sir." He protested halfheartedly, raising a weak index finger.

One look from the Marshal and he was as straight as the boards on the floor. Shane just sighed disappointedly. Jack braced for the inevitable lecture, but all he heard was a stamp. He looked down as the Marshal gave him a piece of paper, his heart sinking at the title: TRANSFER.

Jack sighed deflating.

'Why not just discharge me?' He thought agitated beyond belief. They all had knew the program was shutting down, one Jaeger after another being decommissioned if they didn't go out in a blaze of glory fighting a Kaiju. There was no way wherever he was being sent would let him anywhere near one of the few remaining.

"Since I can not get through that thick as icepack head of yours-**Jack**," Marshal Shane's words snapped him back to parade ready. "I have no choice, but to transfer you to the Shatterdome in Hong Kong."

Jack froze. Literally. The Shatterdome in Hong Kong. THE SHATTERDOME! Jack couldn't believe all his training with the other pilots hadn't been a complete waste of-

"And don't go thinking YOU earned this." The Marshal grunted rising.

Jack bit his lip, as he felt his stomach drop through the floorboards. This could only be compared to getting a slap by Marshal Shane's Jaeger; 'The Mighty Mo.'

Jack stood patiently waiting, as he walked to him. He was practically sitting on pins and needles waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"You have skills, but I have never seen them put into such a loose cannon!" He hissed down his ear, making Jack's hair stand end on end. The Marshal took a step back and sighed, shaking his head as he stared at Jack. "You're just not my type of Ranger. You have humiliated, injured, rejected or otherwise alienated every willing Co-pilot ever to sortie with you. You'll be dealt with for your recent act of recklessness by the Marshal at the Shatterdome in Hong Kong, you are hereby dismissed."

He uttered quietly as he worked not even once looking up at Jack.

Jack quietly walked out the room, not knowing whether to leap with joy, or just lay back in depression after letting down another superior, of another Shatterdome. He'd been bounced from one posting to another for as long as he could remember.

If he wasn't such an amazing fighter inside a Jaeger, he wouldn't have doubted he would be dropped from the program entirely. But he was amazing. One of the best. He had the highest kill score of any pilot in North America.

It just seemed like when he stepped inside a Jaeger he became one with, not just the Co-pilot, but the Jaeger itself. He could do things with his machine that no-one could replicate. To Jack there weren't just two pilot's minds in a machine; there were three minds fighting together as something amazing.

Lately however Jack was connecting better to the Jaegers than his CPs. He never had found a good CP that really seemed to last. Aster 'Lucky Bunny' Eugene was the latest in a long string of CPs. They all just didn't fit. The Jaeger could still be piloted fine, but the Co-pilot would never be an equal partner. Between him and his machine they would always seem to be crowded out, Having to work harder and harder to do their job as Jack took over more and more of the load. To say nothing of the many, and varied personality conflicts.

Jack stopped mulling over his unfortunate history with finding a person he was Drift-Compatible with, when he reached his door. He gathered up his belongings and slipped on his jacket with his Jaeger's emblem etched in the back as he looked around one last time. Then he scratched his white hair, and walked to the helipad. If he knew Marshal Shane, he'd already have a transport to Hong Kong waiting for him.

As he stepped out he heard the familiar whirr of rotors. Of course, he was right.


	3. Vanished

April 7th 2035

Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean

Destination: Hong Kong Shatterdome

0249

'Here.' Jack thought, as he stared out at the volatile waters beneath him.

"This is where it began." He whispered quietly. He gently laid back in the cabin as his transport chopper flew over the deepest part of the ocean. There wasn't anyone else aboard, so Jack had the space to himself. Feeling inclined to make use of it he stretched out to catch some sleep on the uncomfortable canvas bench seating, just knowing that his back was going to hate him for it later.

Idly he reached to his hairline, feeling the all too familiar scar along his head. It was horizontal and wide, thankfully it was just big enough for his hair to hide. He was thankful that it was there for two reasons; it made him look cooler, and it kept his memory blocked. His past was a closed book to him, and he preferred things that way. It helped in Drifting.

For him, life began when he got this scar.

He remembered being told how he got it, the only question in his mind was 'why.'

/

_Jack was just looking after his sister, not that he minded much. She was a good kid. Hardly obnoxious at all for a six year old._

_He had time to kill before leaving for work, which always was a dull ache lasting for eight hours. There was only so much he could do job-wise. Being a mechanic sucked, but he was a high school dropout with a GED. Not that that really meant anything though. He knew he could piece together anything he wanted, he was imaginative. He left school more from disinterest than stupidity, though how wise a decision it had been was up for debate._

_Something his fellow 'zombie' co-workers lacked. Most of them just shamble into work dead to the world until they dosed up on caffeine and did a crappy job fixing up cars, maybe a little custom work, but nothing worth doing. Nothing that would last._

_For now, it was him, his mother, and precious little sister. Dad was long gone, not that he was anything special to Jack anymore. But they were happy. Home was Burgess, a little place in coastal Oregon. It used to be a shipping town for the logging and fishing industries, it had been hit hard, but was currently building itself up again. Better than some places that had to be scrubbed after the Kaiju pounded them to the foundations. _

_He ran with her through golden fields of tall coastal grasses, near their small hometown. Beaches were abandoned since the Kaiju. Rich people moved inland, for safety. With them went the money that kept a lot of seashores up and running. Swimming went out of style faster than you could ever imagine. So the beach was pretty much empty besides Jack's Mother, himself, and the little girl he treasured. So there was no warning siren to get them off the beaches. _

_All he knew was the roar of the ocean vomiting up something titanic._

_Then darkness._

_/_

When Jack woke up again, he was surrounded by a small band of various unidentified Doctors before he felt a needle in his arm and his eyes flutter shut again.

The second time he rose, he nearly fainted, when he saw his reflection. His skull bandaged, his once vibrantly brown eyes a pale blue, and his skin incredibly pale. Thinking it some macabre dream he went back to bed without a second thought.

Over the next few days, Jack showed signs of suffering a type of amnesia that Doctors found odd. When he was asked to remember the attack or anything earlier, it was just black. His name was pretty much made up to fill in the blanks in his file for the Jaeger program.

He smiled quietly as he recalled their surprise at Jack's seemingly adept ability with the Jaegers. How he'd been shipped off once a Marshal, a CP, or a mix of the two found his methods just too insufferable.

'Or maybe they just found my winning personality too, irreverent?' He thought with a quiet smile to himself.

He chanced a glance out his window, and found his face pressing against the glass like a three year old. Right beside them was a massive Jaeger. It was harnessed to a team of helicopters soaring above it, and just by taking a brief glance at it anyone with eyes could tell this was easily the most agile Jaeger ever put into commission. Not the fastest that was the property of the one and only Mark V, _Striker Eureka_. But he could outmaneuver that over engineered crate any day.

No, this machine was experimental, a unique proof-of-concept created at the end of the Mark IV's production run. It was uniquely suited to his strengths as a pilot, and had followed him from station to station. No other Ranger had piloted his machine, at least not without him.

Jack leaned back a little, licking his dry lips as he smiled. _Blue Winter. _His massive Jaeger had finally caught up with them. That could only mean one thing; Nearing destination.

Jack packed up the wrappers from his MRE's and personal snacks on his temporary bunk. Then he went about trying to make himself presentable as a gentle rain began to streak across the windows. Breathing in then out to cool down and slow his pulse. Hopefully he and this Marshal-

He glanced at the paper with his name on it.

'Marshal Pentecost.' Great name, for a Marshal. Would get over their differences easily. It wasn't like he could be sent anywhere else now.

'All the other Marshals are dead.' He thought bitterly as he felt the gentle bump of the wheels hitting the tarmac. The hatch opened to what would be his new home. Jack exhaled again, as he walked out the hatch.


	4. Call of Silence

April 7th 2035

Shatterdome, Hong Kong

The Wards

0300

_"Warning. Hull strength at 72%"_

_A huge saber like protrusion stabbed through the pit that the two pilots controlled the Jaeger from. It narrowly missed gouging the right hemisphere controller from the harness but only succeeded in knocking her out as her right arm and spinal gantries splintered. _

_"Hull strength at 42%."_

_The left hemisphere pilot disengaged and raced over to his partner, his section of the cranium faded into itself from a devastating overhead smash from the huge wedge of bone. As the Knife-head tore through his portion, he immediately engaged his partner's escape pod. She lifted awkwardly in the crippled mechanism, moaning and clutching her stomach._

_Then everything was flashes, screams, one ear-splitting boom -_

_/_

Tooth bolted up at once. Her heart hammering, hair dyed verdant green and peacock blue clung to her sweaty face, and her tears fresh on her cheeks. She panted as she gathered the sheet around herself trying to recapture some of her fleeting body heat. She reached over, and grabbed her clock in a death grip.

'0300. AM.'

She groaned inwardly. She set the clock down, and went to the bathroom to get ready for her inevitable day. Work was at 0600, but she was never getting back to sleep now. Nothing worth doing happens between three and four a.m.

'At least we have a new…' She froze midstream. She didn't know what to call them anymore. Jaegers? Two-ton suits? Maybe, somehow alive? She sighed as she stared at herself in the mirror, before slipping into the shower.

Maybe they were right about her going crazy.

Darkly tanned skin, lovely magenta eyes. And her short-cut hair; when it wasn't dyed carnelian, peacock and jade; was a rich chocolate brown. You'd never have known she worked seriously on the _Cherno Alpha _from dawn till dusk. Squeezing into impossibly tight spaces and completing repairs that would have taken days, in a matter of minutes. Seeing ways of improving, and making her adoptive parent's Jaeger the strongest Kaiju busting tank in the line of duty.

Tall, beautiful, slight. You'd never have guessed she was THE Jaeger mechanic, every pilot wanted to have crawling on their Jaeger. Or in their bed, in the case of some mech jockeys that had cruder intentions. Pigs.

But for the most part she was left alone on account of her close friendship with the Russian crew of _Cherno Alpha_. The two pilots had taken her in, and protected her as their own. Their entire crew was like a big extended family to her. The reason being; her parents.

They dropped with the crew on and off for many years during the _Cherno_'s service, and saved their back more times than any could count. The two pilots treated her as their daughter and taught her as much as they could about their machine.

She stepped out of the steaming water and stretched a sore muscle in her back. She groaned as she dried off her legs. She began running through her head what would have to be prepared today for the newcomer's arrival.

Tooth stretched out again as she slipped on her underwear, then her underclothes, and finally her mechanics overalls with the _Cherno_'s symbol imprinted proudly on the back. She rolled her shoulders back into place, hearing the pops as each complied.

Tooth's name was actually an acronym of her full name, which was awkwardly long due to Russian patronymics. To save breath everyone just settled for 'Tooth.'

However there was one name that others still called her, one not so affectionate. Despite knowing who her rather intimidating parents were, the name persisted. 'Jaeger Child.' That name had followed her since her birth.

She once thought it was so amazing to have been born inside a Jaeger, and then it became a curse. People began whispering that she was crazy, or that her mother was crazy to have gone inside a Jaeger to save Chile knowing she was pregnant. As if there was much choice at the time.

Tooth pretended not to mind and convince her mother,Sasha, she was fine as well. But when everyone wasn't looking, she'd exhale and let her tears fall quietly. She'd never let them win, not entirely.

But she was different. Ever since her birth, Tooth couldn't deny the voices she'd sometimes hear in her head. Often times when she was in a throng she'd dismiss it as simple crowd chatter. Yet when she was alone in the hanger with the Jaegers, she'd hear murmuring voices despite the night crew not paying her any attention, and not saying a thing. She'd checked and rechecked they'd never really break the silence except when they let out the odd yawn. That's when she tried something crazy.

She spoke to a Jaeger.

What scared her more was when it spoke back. She didn't understand how, but she could 'speak' to the Jaegers, and they to her. Once discovering her gift she hid it away. Never revealing to anyone, even her adoptive parents that she could 'talk' to the huge machines.

She had eventually formed two families to replace the one she lost. The first was her parent's closest friends, The Kaidonovskys, who had taught her so much. The other; humongous robots that bashed in skulls.

But this was all history now.

She sighed as she made her way down the hall to the Jaeger Bay. She noticed a few Russian members working on _Cherno Alpha_, and raced to join them. They smiled at her approach. Despite Tooth's thoughts, she was in fact the crew's morale booster. Never wavering, even in the face of hopelessness. She greeted a few with a wink and exchanged a few Russian 'Hellos,' before helping with the tune up. She heard _Cherno_ greet her and tell her where it felt it needed repairs.

She had finished just as her parents were walking in, suited up in their heavy asymmetrical armor and ready to patrol the Japanese border. She smiled at them happily as she tried to rub off the grease on her face. Her mother, Sasha gave her a loving rub on her shoulder and walked inside. Her father; Aleksis noted her tired face and left a mental note to discuss it with her later. He clicked on his helmet and beamed at her in pride. He licked his thumb and teasingly helped her rub off the grease. She laughed and playfully shoved his hand away as she pulled out an old rag and cleaned her face off. He laughed heartily as he slipped in after her mother.

As harsh as they could undoubtedly be,which had to be a requirement to kill Kaiju after Kaiju in the harsh frozen seas of Siberia, they were so gentle with her. Even in all that armor they handled her like porcelain.

_Cherno_, she could hear rumbling like a landslide, the familiar not-quiet-voice of the behemoth machine waking. A great bruiser named after a disaster of times long past and powered by a nuclear heart to spite it, _Cherno _was not a subtle mechanism. He woke with a great roar of challenge that only she could hear.

Tooth smiled and waved the trio off as _Cherno_ was wheeled into the bay on the massive crawler. Suddenly it shifted to look upward as it rolled. She followed her parent's line of sight and saw the newcomer arriving in all its glory, being airlifted by a small fleet of cargo choppers and casting odd shadows in the dawning sun.

All Tooth could think as she saw the massive blue Jaeger placed onto the pallet _Cherno_ had vacated was 'Oh, Wow!'

She gazed at it in awe; it looked like a late Mark IV experimental model. It was slimmer than most, with a figure that was almost gangly. Armor plates thinner than usual and large joint areas meant it was flexible, but not as durable as other Jaegers. What was interesting were the slits in the armor. Every major plate seemed filled with what looked like retracted fins. And the forearms... there was something to them that was odd, like they were shuttered. Maybe a plasma cannon?

She heard a faint prickling at the back of her mind, and turned up to face the Jaeger.

*Call me Blue Winter.* She smiled up at it and turned around shaking her head. «О, ничего себе! » She repeated breathlessly in her adopted tongue as she walked away to tend to an old Mark III named _Gipsy Danger_, that was getting refitted from the scrap heaps of Anchorage, Alaska.


	5. Meeting the Skipper and Company

April 7th 2035

Shatterdome, Hong Kong

The Wards

0400

TO: MARSHAL STACKER PENTECOST OF HONG KONG SHATTERDOME

FROM: MARSHAL SHANE OF HAWAII SHATTERDOME

SUBJECT: TRANSFER

_Marshal Pentecost, I am transferring into your command a Thomas 'Jackie-Boy' Iceland. He is an undisciplined wreck that cannot be found suitable in the environment of war. His endangerment of himself and his Co-pilots outside of combat has become a liability, and it is only through his skill, described in the attached file, that has preserved him from being removed from the Jaeger program. I am transferring him to you in the hopes that maybe you can set him straight, with the understanding that you require every operational Jaeger available, no matter the condition for your PPDC initiative._

_With Respect,_

_Marshal Jeffery Shane._

/

Off the record, sent at the same time but from his fellow Marshal's personal email account, was an equally personal postscript;

_I don't know what to do with this kid Stacks. He's the most unbreakable pilot I have ever had the privilege of meeting. His Jaeger is en route to the Hong Kong Shatterdome. The damn over-engineered icebox barely works without him in it. I just don't know what to do with him Stacks. Maybe you can set this kid straight. You always did better with the trouble cases._

_/_

Pentecost simply powered down his mobile terminal. As if one headache under his 'dome wasn't enough.

/

April 7th 2035

Shatterdome, Hong Kong

Jaeger Bay 7

0930

Jack had never felt so bowlegged before in his life. As soon as he had landed from his recruitment flight, the Marshal had proceeded to take Jack aside into his office and crush him utterly.

Preemptively.

How fair was that? He had made it clear he didn't look on past faults pranks, or even crimes. Stating that _Matador Fury_ had been ready to get shipped in before it was torn apart defending the Baja Peninsula, convict pilots and all. He made it doubly clear that if there was such a prank that jeopardized their fight he would make sure that Jack died outside of his Jaeger.

So.

Nobody screwed with his operation. Message received.

He'd have to be a little tamer here with his attempts to liven up life.

To Jack that felt like a hefty kick to his gut. Despite the internal sarcastic monologue, he was not sanguine about the possibilities here. Being somewhere new was great, but starting like that is never going to set a great tone for his time here. And there was nowhere else to go anymore; this was the end of the line. All the other Shatterdomes were folding up as the Wall went up.

He had no life outside of the program. He didn't know who he was. He had nothing, not even his name from before he woke up in the hospital. When he came to, in his case the first memory he had, was them running uncomfortable tests because of his massive Kaiju Blue exposure.

They'd never seen someone get as basted in that toxic goo as he did and live to tell about it. Sure occasionally some civvie would be splattered and end up with blue hair or heterochromatin or weird bleached patterns on their skin, but he was submersed in the stuff.

The Doctors- always the Doctors, plural, he never learned one of their names, and they wouldn't tell him anyway- would perform uncomfortable tests on him, taking blood and hair and tissue from his muscles, skin and marrow. They'd hook him up to the human side of a drift interface and stare at his telemetry for hours as he remotely operated an RC car around the hospital. What they found, he never knew.

But when they were done, and no one was coming to look for him, they put him in training for the Jaeger program. He was compatible all right. Maybe too good.

These days he was using a false name just a little better than John Doe, and lived and worked in one massive-ass bunker after another.

For now he was hanging onto the rail as he made his way to Bay 7; he feared one step on his own would lead to one massive collapse on the floor. It was a long way down. And there'd be nobody around to catch him.

/

He let go of the rail and took a cautious step forward. He went to take another when he accidentally bumped into something.

When he looked up he found himself face to face with a beautiful woman. What the heck was she doing here?

He couldn't help his eyes as they moved of their own accord. She had a nice figure. Slight, and nicely rounded out. Tall for a woman, maybe 5'8". Wide in the hips. Dark skinned, multicolored hair in a short, feathered bob-cut. Maybe in her early 20's. Dressed like and smelling like a mechanic.

That explains what she was doing here, then.

She saw where his eyes traveled and glared at him furiously. Jack had not been subtle then. Somehow it seemed like he never was.

She looked like she was going to punch him in the face, before she turned on her heel and stomped off. She somehow managed to carve a swath through the somewhat empty hallway in a storm cloud of Russian invectives.

Jack couldn't help but follow her retreating form as she stormed out the main bay, and was able to catch the _Cherno Alpha_ insignia on the back of her overalls. He let out a breath as a low whistle while she left. That was one hell of a woman. A Spitfire if he ever saw one.

Jack suddenly found enough strength in his limbs to stand on his own. Nothing like a gorgeous woman seeing you limp along like an invalid to make you stop immediately.

'And I thought Hawaii had good fishing.' He thought to himself wryly as she disappeared around the corner. Of course he reeled in a few he would never take advantage of them and would,politely, throw them back after a few dates.

No sooner had she left a small four man crew walked around, listening to the youngest member of the group telling a story. This apparently was boring them to tears.

When they noticed Jack they looked him up and down, before one walked up and looked him dead in the eyes. "Are you the new Pilot?" Jack nodded somewhat dumbfounded at the stocky man with the pushy voice as the others began to walk up.

"Call me Skipper. I'll be your Crew Chief. Anything you need just let, me know." Jack nodded again, as the Skipper began to introduce his team.

"Kowalski, Intelligence." The taller man smiled a little and spoke up saying "Substantially above average, but I don't like to brag." One glare from Skipper told him clearly it wasn't a question. "Oh, right. Sorry."

"Rico, Explosives." Jack noticed the guy next to Kowalski polishing something that looked like an old fashioned cherry bomb. He smiled nervously, not sure if he'd prefer having this guy at a birthday party. He might hand him a cake with TNT for candles.

"And this is Private." Jack waited, nodding. "What does he do?" He asked once he felt the silence would stretch on for all eternity. "I'm more or less comedic relief." He replied cheerily. Jack nodded again biting his lower lip. He would later find out that his last name was, in fact Private, and that he held the same rank as the rest of the crew, save Skipper, of course.

"So!" Skipper yelled getting everyone's attention. "This is your crew." Jack nodded looking at them. Secretly his mind was reeling. Why did the Marshal place him in the 'Crazy Crew?'

Oh, right. 'He hates me.' Mystery solved.

Jack pushed the thought out of his mind and gestured them to follow so he could introduce them to the Jaeger they'd be maintaining. Their awed gazes at _Blue Winter _were beyond satisfying to Jack. That was his sleek machine.

Every Jaeger had quirks. Any machine running longer then a few months gets little differences from factory settings, but the Jaegers were fairly singular, with maybe three machines ever being built with the same design, and each of them likely by different countries and at different times. Add in all of the repairs to everything and upgrades that trickled and every Jaeger was unique. And that leaves aside the AI scribing nearly everything it knew about fighting from every pilot that drifted through it, and running off a unique combination of movements, and it was a miracle they got these things to run at all. Really, they did it by pure bloody-minded will.

Jasper Schoenfeld, the cynical bastard that created these metal monstrosities from a child's toy, said once that love was the thing that got a Jaeger moving. Maybe there was some truth to that. But love for what? Jack had no idea, not yet.

Jack shook his head to set aside the thoughts and set to work on running up his new crew on the finer points of its off-spec. alterations.

He found himself next to Private, and somehow chatting away with the pudgy guy, as they unbolted a huge plate of armor from _Blue Winter_'s chest plate so that it could be hefted out by the overhead crane.

Maybe this crew wouldn't be so bad.

There was a loud explosion from the left. Jack and Private turned to see Rico, covered in smoke and his hair still on fire slightly. If Jack had to guess, Rico was testing _Winter_'s plasma cutter, and it had accidentally fired. Instead of panicking like Kowalski was trying to get an extinguisher, he jumped up and gave a loud 'Wahoo,' while Kowalski dowsed him in the extinguisher fluid like his whole body was aflame.

'Then again...'

Jack sighed.


	6. Mind Games

April 8th 2035

Shatterdome, Hong Kong

Jaeger Simulator 9

0845

Kowalski was absolutely furious. He walked over to the nearest wall and began slamming his head against it as he recounted every last battle simulation he had created for Jack this morning being knocked aside like they were standing still.

Jack's goading wasn't helping much either. Nor was the fact that he was doing it without a Co-pilot.

Skipper walked in with two thermoses of cod stew, and wasn't too surprised to see Kowalski trying to give himself a concussion. After just two slams against the wall, Kowalski lost balance and turned dizzily to face Skipper. He immediately straightened up as best he could. He may be a certified genius, but that had no bearing on whether or not he was an idiot.

Skipper just sighed patting him on the back as he led him away to the infirmary.

**/**

Tooth was walking to the last simulator bay to upgrade it with the new data from _Cherno_'s latest overhaul, when she heard the groaning coming from there. She peeked around the corner and was rewarded with a battered looking Kowalski and a tired Skipper.

All it took was one look from Skipper to convey what had happened. She waved to him over her shoulder to let him know she had the situation under control.

Their new Pilot was in the Jaeger Simulator, and he was good. Very good. He was also the creep undressing her with his eyes from yesterday. The powder blue jumpsuit was a dead giveaway.

Tooth pursed her lips together and thought. She gradually grew a devious smile, and decided to teach this wannabe hotshot a lesson. Before he hit on her where her father saw him and he got broken thumbs. That hadn't been fun last time. Poor Chucky; he didn't quite deserve that.

She strolled into the control center, and flipped on a microphone. "I'll be taking over for Kowalski." Was all she said as she clipped it off, sat down, and began calling up the parameters of her own battle simulation. All it took was a few keystrokes to pre-stage a scenario as he made blue sushi out of a generic Kraken that Private had programmed months ago. They must really be at the bottom of the barrel then.

A stormy sea drop and a sinuous category 4 Kaiju as of yet unnamed that looked quite a bit like a snake covered in overlapping, rear-facing jutting knives. Perfect.

This needed a more personal touch than letting the Simulator AI run the beastie. Much as she hated to say it, the perv was pretty good. She slipped on a pair of gauntlets and a virtual reality helmet, and began the simulation. Too bad for him she had the fastest power glove in Hong Kong.

/

Jack tried to raise whoever was now in charge of the simulation, but as he felt himself being lifted in another drop he decided to sit back and get ready for the fight.

Solo Training was... weird. It was really only used by most everybody before they strap into the real deal, to weed out the ones that can't drift well enough to work a Jaeger, and to have the techs gather data that they use to place trainees with their test partners. After a few days most everyone graduates to the tandem machines or washes out. One man training is a bit pointless if you don't pilot alone. But that meant that it was perfect for Jack, who didn't have a CP yet, and without any new trainees nobody ever used it. And the Drift was always easier alone.

/

Marshal Pentecost was performing an impromptu inspection of the Jaeger Simulators, when he noticed something off. What he couldn't put his finger on. He turned to Mako and was about to tactfully ask her if she saw what the problem was, not letting on that he as of yet had no real idea, until he realized what exactly was off.

Kowalski was Jack's simulator adviser and overseer, and he was in the medical wing for a checkup. Which meant who else was administering a battle simulation to Jack in bay 9?

Mako looked worriedly at her father-figure until he suddenly turned on a dime and began taking long strides to Jaeger Simulation Bay 9. She had to practically run to keep up with him.

/

Jack walked through the choppy seas. He couldn't find his balance and he had trouble staying on his feet. It was one of the downsides to piloting one of the lighter Jaegers; you get thrown around a bit.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a tail of some type break the water, with a frill like a Dimetrodon running all the way back. Jack had to laugh a little. Whoever this chick was she sure moved a Kaiju with elegance. She was playing with him a bit, but that was fine. It just gave him more time to figure out her game.

Jack couldn't resist the urge to talk some trash, so he clicked on his com. "Hey Cleopatra! The way you're having this thing move, it looks like you've had a little experience with this sort of thing. You've been friendly with many snakes Princess?"

'Oh, you little oversexed-'

"ERRH" As her internal monologue veered wildly away from actual language toward the need to induce pain, Tooth growled inarticulately.

Tooth knew later on she shouldn't have let the stupid jab get under her skin as much as it did, but right now those words somehow wormed their way in and practically threw a match on gasoline. She swung out her right fist eager to make contact with this arrogant pilot's Jaeger. The Serpent surged from the ocean like a shot and hurtled toward _Blue Winter _with its bone-armored skull.

Jack saw the strike coming, sidestepped it easily to the right, and activated the weapon integrated into _Winter_'s left arm. 'Now we're talking.' Jack smiled as water from the ocean and the rain and the air condensed and froze in the raised armor shutters of the arm, until a massive spike of ice jutted out of the armor's opening. The shard scored its armor toward the tail end of its elongated body, and the cooling system activated on the right arm. He charged at the creature as it came around and roared at him, right arm cocked back with its new weapon ready to ram down this monster's throat.

/

Mako watched as the Jaeger pilot and mechanic went practically toe to toe. Iceland was good. This was to be expected, as no one had ever doubted his skill in battle, only in life. However, the mechanic was good. Very good. Surprisingly good. Her control over the Kaiju avatar was fluid, and natural. She seemed to have a talent for this sort of machine operation. Despite the lack of options that her chosen weapon had, she was making use of the surrounding turbulence and its small body profile to withdraw and attack from odd angels to gain every advantage. She would slam down in an arcing jump, only to let the enemy stagger, before circling around and tightening the noose, attempting to bind the Jaeger between the bone shards threshing together.

Yet when it seemed one had the upper hand the other was quicker and ready. Jack gave an impromptu strike to the side, and pinning it with his left somewhere a bit ahead of the serpent's middle, and pinning it to the seabed with his right. She thrashed like a worm on a hook, and the ice holding it was starting to fracture, even as its flesh began to cool and dry. _Winter _cocked its left arm high while the right pinned the beast, and readied its loosened arm's weapon. Cycling up an internal electromagnetic superconductive catapult, Jack loosed an eighty foot javelin of ice, staking the Kaiju higher up its body. Another spear precipitated from the air, and he adjusted his aim to nail another section down closer to its head.

But it was not to be, the beast shatter the binding pylons and twisted bleeding into the water, injured but not dead, to begin the battle anew.

Both were fast opponents, almost impossible for a Jaeger or a Kaiju at their massive scale. Jaegers were made of advanced alloys and metamaterial structural materials like diamond foam gilded with titanium. Kaiju were built from the cellular level up to lift and withstand their immense weight outside of the water, cell and tissue structured and rigid, but flexible in certain directions. But they were so both so big, and under so much stress, that their reactions times slow considerably, just to overcome their own mass. They reacted easily, instinctively to the other's actions, despite the lag of opposing that much gravity and momentum.

The way they found openings in the other defenses was incredible. Both she and the Marshal looked to each other sharing a knowing smile. She knew almost immediately what he was thinking; they were Drift compatible. Skipper, who had just returned from dropping off Kowalski, was staring open mouthed at the huge 3-D render suspended above the display pedestal that Tooth was working on. Cod stew forgotten in his hand.

The best teams were already half inside each other's heads before they ever get into the Conn-pod. Matching pilots was more of an art than a science, truth be told. You can match people up by the numbers all day, but usually it was the teams thrown together by choice and chance and blood that would make the machine move.

/

Jack staggered back slightly as he blasted his opponent back into the raging torrents. His Jaeger's armor was melted away slightly on his right arm, there were gouge marks along the outside covering of the pit that was letting a torrent of rain into the innards and his Jaeger's lower abdomen torn half open from this thing's shredding. Gods alone only knew what that'd do if or when it froze from the coolant.

His opponent was still fast in the water and the great frill along its spine furiously ungulate whipping the water into a froth.

He decided it was time to end this right now. He ran forward dislocated its jaw with a left cross made into a heavy club with a sheath of ice. He hooked its neck with his right, felt its serpentine tail coil _Winter_'s arm, and open in an elongated tri-claw like appendage at the tip to strike at its body. He stretched out his intercepting left as far as he could to keep its tail just out of reach, and vented coolant into the right arm to frost the coils to its _Blue Winter_'s hull. He pulled back his left, and pushed his left palm into its gaping jaws.

Tooth was surprised at this move, but either way she was going to win. Just a little corrosive spittle would destroy the arm, and then a little more pressure would bring her tail close enough to crush his head and yank it off. Just as she was about to enact her attack, she found herself slowing down. She looked at the coils frosted to the machine and saw the glacial pack creep over her beautiful monster, making its flesh crack and shatter. Jack smiled. His Jaeger wasn't called _Blue Winter _for nothing. Its Specialty was a second generation mass refrigeration system based on the one used in _Horizon Brave _and from the looks of things it was working beautifully.

At least in the simulation.

Tooth reeled back as her body began to freeze over, soon finding her Avatar that she decided to call San haki, roaring in outrage. Being robbed of the agency to do anything else. She stood there frozen in shock as the pilot walked forward pulled back with his Jaeger's ice encrusted arm and smashed her into Icee Blue ice cubes.

Incensed, she panted as the simulation ended, and the message 'Would you like to try again?' Flashed over her screen. And condescendingly from over the loudspeaker. Stupid AI.

She growled as she yanked off her controls, and turned to face Marshal Pentecost, Miss Mori, and Skipper. Tooth ducked her head deeply in a quickly attempted bow and tried to make herself small as the Marshal turned on the microphone to the Jaeger cockpit. This was so not going to end well.

/

Jack was grinning like a madman; he had never had such fun in a battle simulation. He had to request this person for next time. He heard his microphone click.

"Not bad your 'Majesty,' we should play more often." He teased.

"Get out of the Simulator and be at my office at 1800. Now Ranger!" Marshal Pentecost replied. Jack felt his face grow beet red, as he clicked on the radio again.

"Copy that Marshal, sir." He replied quietly as he exited through the opposite hatch. Jack did not want to face the Marshal right now, especially after that little jab. Jack groaned as he made his way to the office. 'And the day was going so good…' He thought glumly, as he sat inside waiting for the Marshal.

/

Tooth didn't know whether to yell or laugh. This pilot had just shot off another jab at her, which was where the urge to yell came in. The urge to laugh was when the pilot realized he was addressing the Marshal of the Shatterdome.

Then he directed his attention to her.

This led to the urge to hide behind anything.

Unfortunately there really wasn't anything to hide behind. He looked her up and down, but not the same way the pilot 'boy' did.

"Tech Specialist..." He began

Tooth was about to answer, most likely her common name by reflex which would be a mistake, when Mako Jumped in.

"Teerthankarovna, Tulika Teerthankarovna." Mako said with an apologetic smile, as she tossed Tooth under the bus. "Her parents were Teerhankar and Anjana Hegde, from _Kali Armature_."

"Yes, the Kaidonovsky's girl. You have a lot to live up to." He said something unreadable in his eyes. "Your parents would be proud."

Tooth wasn't sure which ones he meant, but really it didn't matter. The message and the odd, heavy warmth it gave her, the pride and weight of responsibility, were the same either way.

Tooth was given a friendly pat on the shoulder by Mako, who shot her a sympathetic and somewhat jealous look before followed the Marshal out. The Marshal signaled Skipper to follow, and the two began to discuss as they walked along.

As soon as the room was void of all people, Tooth slumped so deeply into her chair her ass was hanging in the air.


	7. Welcome to the Drift

April 9th 2035

Shatterdome, Hong Kong

Jaeger Bay 7

1000

Jack's hand flew over the left hemisphere's controls like he was born knowing what sequences would power up his massive Jaeger.

"Okay." He flicked one last control and _Blue Winter _roared to life.

"Cranium pit online, awaiting second pilot." Tooth walked in glumly and plugged into her harness without a word. "Nice of you to make it 'Majesty.'" Jack teased softly, as he continued checking the systems. Tooth ignored him, her mind still could not believe what happened yesterday, as she began to activate the neural systems.

The _Blue_ _Winter_'s drop suddenly shook Tooth from her reverie as the head portion dropped down to join the rest of the Jaeger. She heard Jack give a loud 'Whoop,' as they dropped into the Bay holding the titan.

"Engaging Neural Handshake." Kowalski's voice chimed in through the radio, as the head finally stopped screwing on. Tooth felt repulsed at the idea that this creep would be strolling through her head, and vice versa.

Tooth felt the tug then suddenly she flashed through memories. First she wound around battles and fights _Blue Winter _had participated in, but when she reached Jack's memories there was nothing. No memories, no ranking, nothing. It was just him and the Jaeger. Always together, but always fighting. Where was the rest of his life? It was like somebody redacted his Brain!

The feelings he was putting into_ Blue Winter_, those were really different too. Most Pilots don't think about their Jaeger as more than an extension of themselves, maybe they have pride like a fighter pilot for his plane They all came off as so detached. With her... gifts, she could never look at _Winter _like that.

Jack knew, down to his bones that this thing was his family, his home. It was so odd, but it was him. It was actually kind of endearing. He hadn't even thought of her naked since the neural handshake. Now that she was paying attention to his memories, he hadn't even thought of her naked once, just curious as to why a beautiful woman, like her, was in the bunker. Never had she felt so embarrassed for judging someone, or flattered at the compliment.

She could feel what _Winter_ felt about Jack too. He was so proud of his pilot. How far he had come, the battles they won from Jack's shrewdness, and his well hidden, unflinching sense of duty. At this Tooth couldn't help the smile of admiration cross her face.

As Jack connected to Tooth he felt the familiar presence of his Jaeger, then he suddenly stepped into another Jaeger. No, Wait. On second thought Jack realized he was in Tooth's head he'd never gotten this deep into someone else in the Drift before. What had he been doing wrong all these years?

He watched as the memory replayed inside her head, and then suddenly-

DON'T CHASE THE RABBIT

"Tooth!" Tooth looked up shocked, and she immediately tapped the radio. "What, happened?"

Kowalski's voice sounded panicked as he quickly popped on her communication.

"It's Jack! I can't get a lock on his mind and my heart feels like its going to explode!" Tooth glanced at Jack and watched in horror as he seized up, like he'd had his brain stem jammed in an electric socket. Or plugged into a massive killing machine. Forget Kowalski's heart exploding, she had to worry about her Co-pilot.

/

The _Blue Winter_'s current crew was in a chaos induced frenzy in the control hub.

"Jack's nearly at cardiac arrest and the Drift is dragging her along for the ride!"

"He's somewhere deep, but telemetry doesn't look like he's in Tooth's memories!"

"I've lost him on Handshake, but he's still in the Drift somewhere!"

"How is that even Possible?"

"Kowalski! Track him down. That's an order. Everybody else, stay frosty."

"Aye Skipper."

"I think I found him. He's bypassed the Synch system somehow and jacked himself directly into the weapons systems. How the heck did he get in there?"

/

Why was it so cold all of a sudden? The Conn-Pod was frosting over. Some malfunction in the cooling system? What was Jack doing? Tooth stretched over as much she could to grab his arm.

/

"Get him gone gentlemen; I'm not losing our Ranger on our first Drift." Skipper ordered steely in the face of disaster. "Rico! Get him out of weapons ASAP before he freezes the little lady. Kowalski! Dig him out of _Blue Winter _if you have to drag him out one circuit at a time. Private! Override motion control. Last thing we need is a rampaging killbot in a bunker. Look alive, gentlemen. This is Game day."

"Yes Sir" The Tech crew chorused with a surprising amount of enthusiasm for guys typing really fast without looking away from their screens.

"Done!"

"Done!"

"Done!"

"Done!"

"Outstanding gentlemen! Call the Medics, and inform the Marshal. Pull them out, now!"

/

Then Jack surprised everyone and unplugged, hanging limp in the harness as water vapor cooled and cloaked the floor of the pod in mist. "Neural Handshake invalid, would you like to try again?"

That freaking AI. Ugh.

Tooth stared at him, as he dangled unconscious in the harness. She unlatched in record time and raced over to Jack.

His nose was pouring blood.

She gently eased him on to the floor, his whole body felt too warm, as if he touched the sun. She felt so useless, she knew Jaegers, not people. She could sense _Blue Winter _adjusting the temperature, and cool Jack down.

She heard a flurry of voices flooding the radio, but in that instant she didn't care as she cradled Jack's head. And frantically recriminating herself.

"This is my entire fault. Stupid Tulika! What did you think would happen if you put your messed up head in a Jaeger, much less somebody else!? So stupid."

And after a moment:

"Please. Please. Please be alright."

Suddenly a voice of authority pierced her head. She looked up to see Marshal Pentecost standing above her flanked by two medics. One look conveyed all he needed to say as he gently pulled Jack from her lap. She just looked at them wordlessly, and followed as they half-dragged, half-carried Jack to the medical bay.

It was there her parents found her when they got back from patrol, still waiting anxiously as she ran her thumb over his limp hand. She didn't even register them. Sasha wanted to reach out to her, but her husband gently gripped her arm and shook his head. They quietly left the two be.

She waited there beside Jack, forlorn, until he woke hours later.


	8. About Face

April 9th 2035

Shatterdome, Hong Kong

Jaeger Bay 4

1312

Jónsi Haddock, nicknamed 'Hiccup,' because of his constantly brilliant yet somewhat finicky upgrades to _Cherno_'s weaponry, was tired. He had been working round the clock with several others on the Russian Jaeger. Which to everyone else, was considered a working antique. They weren't wrong. _Cherno Alpha _was the oldest Jaeger still running, and that meant even without a Kaiju to fight it needed a lot of work to keep running.

Which he had to do.

At leastways that's what it seemed like in the few hours since the Crew had been downsized by one, and everyone was spreading the load from Tooth's speedy removal from the repair roster.

To say nothing of the fact that the stress of her being plugged into one of those flaming metal death-traps right now, in a session none of them could get eyes on for love or money. Not even her also-pilot-parents. Something about decreasing the stress on her during the first test. Whatever.

Tooth being tapped as a Jaeger pilot was making life problematic for the tight knit crew of _Cherno Alpha_.

The routine crane-assisted armor removal the crew was engaged in at the moment was interrupted by Camicazi suddenly bustling in, all nervous energy. She was the resident team medic, the only one on _Cherno_'s crew allowed anywhere near the test, as she was Tooth's primary physician. A red flag was raised in the minds of everyone working in the hangar bay. That could only mean one thing: Something had gone wrong with Tooth's test.

Cringing, she whispered a few things to the pilots, who had been listening to the Crew Chief's status report on the scheduled maintenance before Cami inserted herself in the conversation. She stood there after she finished, almost seeming to brace herself against their reaction. They only ignored her for a moment. Then they sprinted out into the connecting hallways in a dramatic flaring of their fur-lined greatcoats with the speed of their departure.

Hiccup looked to Astrid and the others, whom all shrugged. He turned to his Crew Chief; Master Machinist First Class Nickolas St. North. His family had emigrated to America and back over the course of the 20th century, giving the man a name left over from Ellis Island Americanization, and a thick Russian accent. He was closest to the Kaidonovskys, Tooth included. He'd taught her everything she knew about Jaeger mechanics and intricacies.

He seemed distraught, his blue eyes clouded. He walked away from Cami, who looked positively sick with worry, and he clapped his hands to signal for attention. The whole crew dropped what they were doing assembled on the concrete floor of the bay. The message he gave was brief and blunt.

"There was an accident this morning. Toothie is well, her pilot isn't. For now, that is all we know."

There was a release of breath as everyone unclenched. Horrible as it was for her partner, at least their girl was alright.

Hiccup felt galvanized, Tooth was the overbearing sister he always wanted. Most of the crew felt the same. He was far from the only one upset, the whole crew conveyed looks of worry.

"What was she even doing inside a Jaeger?" That was Astrid, their particularly outgoing control AI debugger, asking what they all were wondering.

Nobody had been privy to why a girl without any combat training had been drafted into the cockpit with a pilot so new to the base, that barely anybody had even seen him.

Hiccup suddenly moved forward, without any real intent behind the action. He felt North's hand clap on his shoulder, stopping him momentarily from whatever foolishness he was set to. His questioning look was answered by Hiccup's snort. "Pentecost and this hot shot pilot had no business putting her inside a Jaeger! I don't know about you, but I'm going to demand some answers. That is the least Toothie deserves."

He boldly began walking through the tunnel-like hallways to the Marshal's office. He soon heard the entire crew march behind him, a small mob of angry technicians. A few of them wielded heavy tools and welding torches with little menace, if much melodrama. North just followed along in the back, knowing that he could probably stop this, but bemused enough to let it play out until the crew got this little rebellion out of their system or Tooth's parents arrived for their inevitable meeting with their commanding officer.

They met another smaller crew of four dressed in black coming from the opposite direction. He just locked eyes with the short pudgy man in the lead for a second. The younger man raised an eyebrow in question and the other shrugged, signaling assent, as they together stormed into Pentecost's office.

/

_A goliath Kaiju was above Jack and heading landward, towards his home. He sprang up and began yelling. It was outlandishly massive. Whatever it was it made the category II Kaiju that took Burgess back to the Stone Age 6 years ago seem tame._

_It had more heads than was easily countable. Each a long, thin thing; oddly horse-like, but with a barracuda's gaping jaws. Each head was bone plated, and sported a plethora of small black eyes along the flat sides._

_The necks were long, sickly grey and eel-like, with a trail of short interwoven spikes running on the inner edge, flexing and grasping with each minor movement. The body, what you could see of it, was little more than a knot in the king-rat that was the thing's coiling and interwoven heads and the rather stubby tails. Those were more like the tentacles on a cuttlefish, if God had been slapdash enough to put them at odd angles and random lengths. Two gnarled and thick-scaled talons stuck off to the side to drag its bulk across the ground, sickly shifting with every motion in a way that would be impossible with any bones anchoring them in place on what there was of a torso_

_When he'd first seen the beast, he and his sister Beth had been at the seaside, away from everything. It had risen from the water, great serpent necks writhing from the hulk of its body, whipping the bay into a froth._

_Jack had grabbed the little girl desperately by her hand and ran, terrified, along the abandoned hillsides of the coast following the street that lead into the town proper, toward the shelters that had been dug in the latest bit of reconstruction._

_They had to have been a few miles into the town when the corrugated steel of the warehouse behind them was demolished by a carelessly undulating tail._

_Jack felt his breath slap his lungs. He coughed violently, and looked up from where the building's collapse had thrown him._

_He watched as everyone began running into the reinforced bunkers, the automated locks hammering the doors down from above and sealing them away as the Kaiju approached. He turned to see Beth pinned under a scrap piece of metal pylons, her eyes wide and her hand desperately reaching out to him._

_He didn't hesitate, he raced to her and hefted the debris with strength he didn't know he had, as the Kaiju trampled the nearby outlying structures of the city. Its footfall sent a small shockwave, knocking people off their feet and disorienting them as they panicked in the general direction of safety below ground._

_That was when the Jaeger dropped. They were somewhere halfway between the Los Angeles and Anchorage Shatterdomes, which meant that response time from either was long in coming. Even with early warning, the Kaiju had made landfall half an hour ago. As it was, things were getting dangerous for anyone not encased in at 100 tons of armor._

_The Jaeger, which he would learn much later, was _Meteor Epoch_, splashed-down in the depths of the bay, immediately drawing the Kaiju's attention to it. A hulking, bulky rounded body with a massive armored hump on between its shoulders, _Epoch_ was massive even by Jaeger standards. each arm had grasping hands protruding from the inner edges of the great torpedo-like shape of it's forearms, hinting at what weapons it might bring to bear. And of course as one of the new _Mark IV _machines, it was the very top of the line._

_Not that it mattered to the plebs on the ground._

_The Jaeger raised both arms before settling its weight to brace for its assault. The rounded protuberances on the ends of _Epoch_'s arms blossomed like a titanic flower buds, the armor giving way to recessed launching tubes that let forth a salvo of anti-Kaiju missiles. Each strike burst into flame, tearing hunks of flaming meat from the beast and sending them hurtling across Burgess' modest skyline and into the streets._

_The goblets of flesh rained down on the panicked citizens, terrifying them to greater speed. What was worse was that the Kaiju bits were still wriggling where they lay, toxic blue blood pulsing out onto the tarmac._

_That was just not right._

_Jack quickly found an unsealed bunker, his fear giving him frenetic speed._

_Just as he dragged his sibling to what was probably the last shelter still open, he saw in his periphery that the random meat-eors were starting to stretch and warp at the bloody ends into what looked like a leech's toothy maw. Bone shattered and muscle twisted horrifically as the Kaiju flesh began to shamble in the streets, dripping azure ichor everywhere._

_That was so not right at all!_

_One of the Kaiju-lettes moved between the two of them and the safety of the bunker. They were only a few yards from the door. The police officer at the door was looking right at him. He was going to close the door, even with Jack's eyes begging him to keep it open over the monster's back._

_Jack had to do something._

_He slowly sidled to the side of the road. Pickling up a bit of rebar torn from a building somewhere, he gripped his little sister's hand and tried to curve around the bleeding hunk of violent meat held up on random veins and muscle fibers. But the shattered rib fragments that had oriented towards him tracked their progress, like it was watching him, and it was only a matter of time until it sprung at them._

_Time to do something desperate._

_He quickly pulled his sister into a one-armed hug and kissed her temple before throwing her to the side, yelling for her to run as he turned to bear on the beast. She sprinted inside and into the throng, the police officer slamming his hand on the control for the locking mechanism. The door slammed down like and executioner's axe, separating the two of them._

_He gagged at the foul stench of the thing, like seawater and dead animal in a sun-heated dumpster misted with ammonia. But that was fine, Beth was safe. Everything from here was gravy._

_Taking the steel in his hands he did what he could to save his own life. It was not easy. The fact he was the only thing with a pulse above ground was drawing more predatory gristle from all around. _

_He bashed the first one in the side and was gratified when it tumbled from its unsteady standing position and writhed in pain. But the other Kaiju-spawn were quick to close the space it had vacated._

_None of them were well coordinated, they had no eyes or ears, and they used all the wrong bones to support themselves where they used any at all. But still, they were dangerous, seeping Kaiju Blue and armed with jutting bone and scale and spines._

_So he fought them. Wasn't much choice in the matter. Between one thing and another he got maneuvered away form the shelter Beth was in. No way to tell if that was intentional. Where he was at was hard to figure until he realized he'd Drifted back to the shore fighting the things that had chased him._

_He had no idea how close the Kaiju and the Jaeger had gotten to him until he saw them. The Kaiju had gouges all over it, which explained his problem, and some heads were just missing or beaten to a pulp where they trailed on the ground. It was between him and the Jaeger. This quickly became important, because Jack was in the line of fire._

Epoch_ hunched over and upon its arms after a nasty body slam and on the armored hump of its back more and more missile launch tubes opened. The Kaiju rushed it, the strongest remaining head leading the charge, smacking into the head of the Jaeger. _Epoch_ unleashed its deadly salvo, the missiles flying wide before arching back to the Kaiju, catching the Jaeger in the blast. That set off the machine's internal magazine, and that blast pulped the Kaiju, throwing great arcs of its blue blood in the air and burning what was left of the thing to a charred turquoise, and black corpse. _

_It would later be called a tragedy; one of the first Jaegers destroyed fighting a Kaiju. At least this time the deadly animal was killed at the same time._

_For Jack it was the end._

_Jack was splattered by the aerial blood spray with enough force to be knocked into the water. Blue blood spattered on his face and mouth and mixed in with the water sputtering into his lungs. He was unlucky enough to drown in blood. It covered him from head to toe, nothing uncovered. _

_Kaiju blue is toxic even in small amounts, working under alien biochemistry. Ingesting it invoked the term hyper-lethal._

_It was also mutagenic, to a small extent._

_That took major exposure, to do anything major. It was more likely to kill you, because even small amounts were fatal. Extremities were often discolored by contact, and you would often see bodies bleached white or dyed blue. That is not what happened here._

_Jack was lucky. But nobody would realize that for a long time._

_When he woke he was on a blue stained beach, and he could just barely make out someone running to him as his face collapsed into white sand._

_/_

Jack's eyes snapped open at once. He remembered. He remembered everything.

He had a family, a little sister named Beth. And she was alive.

/

Jack was lying down, and was also uncomfortably warm. Well, except for the soothing cold in his right arm. That particular sensation was the feeling of a rehydrating IV's refrigerated fluid. It was a familiar sensation for him. So, he was in the infirmary.

He felt a warm pressure on his hand and glanced down to see his Co-pilot. She was muttering unintelligible words sleepily as she lay with her head in Jack's lap as he lay in the infirmary bed. He gently squeezed her hand and she started drowsily, multicolored head splayed everywhere in cowlicks as she somewhat blearily looked up at him.

He softly smiled at her, to show there were no hard feelings about the brain damage. "Hi."

Her tired, dopey smile dwarfed his own. "Hi."

/

Sasha and Aleksis Kaidonovsky were not what one would call restrained; especially when it came to the girl they had taken as their daughter. Their child, who they had fought every day for the last 18 years to protect, had been in an accident. One roughly equivalent to an industrial accident, that also involved her brain being wired to a machine. She was in the infirmary. That was the total of their knowledge.

They barreled down the halls like a two-car Slavic freight train until they were in the infirmary. Seeing their girl alive, well, and embarrassingly napping on a boy's lap calmed them somewhat.

But they still had some administrative ass to kick. Someone was accountable for her being in a Jaeger that had grievously malfunctioned. For that there must be a reckoning.

/

When the Kaidonovskys stepped into the Marshal's office, it was in utter chaos. It was crowded with hysterical Jaeger mechanics trying to explain, demand an explanation, and panic. Two sets of crews were yelling at Marshal Pentecost, who was sitting at his desk looking about ready to begin firing people.

Out of a cannon.

Into the sun.

Their presences silenced both crews, who took the silent order to leave save for North and Skipper. It was time for the adults to talk.

/

Jónsi looked up and groaned. _Striker Eureka_'s mechanic crew was coming around the corner, obviously to give their daily maintenance report to the Marshal, with all of the regular egotistical braggadocio. He ignored them as they exchanged pleasantries with some of the other crew members, and by pleasantries it was more like shots at _Cherno_'s crew because their Jaeger needed more tending than _Eureka_. Like wear-and-tear from running for a decade and change was something they could just fix overnight, especially being out a set of hands.

He chanced a glance up, and felt his heart break a little, even as he felt glad. Tooth was coming with her Co-pilot. He looked odd, but if she was half holding him up maybe he wasn't too bad. Even if she did curse a blue streak after they met the other day.

He registered _Eureka_'s crew pushing through _Cherno_'s ranks to meet the new arrivals. He watched in horror as they approached the two, and silently slipped away get the only four people who could end this in any way other than tears.

/

Sasha Kaidonovsky was silent, as her husband Aleksis roared and blustered at Stacker Pentecost, demanding answers the man did not have as to why his daughter was in a malfunctioning Jaeger during what should have been a routine activation.

What their commanding officer had managed to tell them, before the great overprotective oaf had gone off half-cocked, was that they were investigating the incident and as of yet the results were inconclusive.

Sasha thought that the thin one in black had been screaming something about irregularities in the Jaeger's control interface before he and the rest of the maintenance personnel were ushered out. He may have known something, but there was no helping that now.

As it was, Aleksis was tiring of yelling, though he would not admit to such nor would he soon stop. Stubborn. Stacker was about to lose his composure, in this the second of two stressful interviews in a row on this issue. And his own stress about his own foundling daughter being snatched up as _Gipsy Danger_'s second pilot, this had to be hitting close to home, little though he showed it.

Sasha took pity on the two fools and broke into the conversation to put them out of their misery.

"Enough, Aleksis." She began, "If he knew anything about the accident he would tell us. It is too soon to know what went wrong."

Pentecost nodded his face stern. That man, even when thanking you he had to be so grim.

"Fine." Aleksis barked, switching tracts to get to the heart of why the both of them really came anyway, once they knew little Tulika was unharmed. "Why her, Marshal? Why our girl? There are plenty of recruits for this boy to fight with. Why our child, who has none of their training?"

"You know why." Pentecost shot back, referring to the recording of the simulation that had brought her to his attention in the first place, and which he had used to talk the two of them into allowing her to be entered into the program.

"That proves nothing." Sasha countered, "A simulator is not the Drift. She had never interfaced with anything, man or machine, before today. It was foolish to expect anything but a disaster"

"As I said before, we do not have the time to martyr ourselves to caution." the Marshal said, "This war is about to become that much more dangerous, and we need every asset we can lay hands on. Your daughter has the skills, you taught her to fight yourselves. She was compatible with the pilot already assigned. She was Drifting in the _womb_; our records on her birth parents confirm that. I have every reason to put her in that Jaeger and I have every reason to do it again, unless that becomes absolutely impossible."

"That is exactly her point, Marshal!" Aleksis joined in, fists supporting him as he leaned over the table to look down on his superior, and press his point, "What if Tulika is the cause of this? The girl is the apple of my eye, but there may be good reason to keep her from another's mind. She has had night-terrors her entire life. Her mind may not be so welcoming of others."

"Rest assured," Pentecost began, "that outside of the risks inherent in our profession I have no higher priority than the lives of those under my command. If it is in fact Miss Teerthankarovna is unable to serve as the second pilot of _Blue Winter_, then I will find another. But we do not yet know the cause of the accident, nor whether your daughter is the cause or whether it is some other factor. There are irregularities about both the Jaeger and the other pilot that go above your clearance to know. Suffice to say-"

He was interrupted by a skinny technician in the Russian uniform bursting into his office in a panic.

"Fight…in the hallway!" He shouted, before realizing he had just made a fool of himself and finishing, "Thought you ought to know."

/

It was a long walk from the infirmary, but the two of them needed to debrief the Marshal on their disastrous start-up as soon as they were able. The neurologists on call had cleared him for duty so long as he reported back after the debrief for further observation. Jack was still woozy, but managed just fine. Thanks to his partner. He smiled at that.

She was nothing but what he had come to expect from his partners thus far in the Jaeger program, but that was not a bad thing. Not at all. He doubted any of his other partners would have dragged his injured butt through half the Shatterdome, at least not out of genuine concern.

Too soon his good, if slightly concussed, mood was terminally interrupted by their reaching the Marshal's office.

They said some things. He didn't really pay attention because what was the use of a head injury if you didn't take advantage and not remember pointless things unimportant people insist on bothering you with.

Then somebody said the words 'Jaeger Child,' and Tooth; who had passed out from mental fatigue and distress waiting for him to finish his trip down memory lane, who had given him some idea of who he freaking was, and who carried his crippled butt a quarter mile to get here; just crumpled like a paper cup.

So, that was her. Tooth was the 'Jaeger Child.' He knew about her, the Jaeger program was a relatively small community and word got around. She was one of the bonafide urban legends of the program. They said the Drift messed her up in the head in vitro when her mother entered the Drift while pregnant. The fact that she was born in a torn-open Conn-Pod in a totaled Jaeger with her Father already dead and her Mom soon to follow from a hemorrhage didn't help.

It was spooky, especially with how much of Jaeger tech nobody really understood. So they made up stories about her, that she was bad luck. Kaiju followed her. She worked as a mechanic because she was trying to go back into the Jaeger to understand it and just hadn't figured out how yet. That she when she felt her parents dying, she felt what happened afterwards too. It was all superstitious crap, but people are dumb, especially in large groups.

Case in point:

These Toolbags just insulted a Jaeger pilot in front of her partner. Tooth may be a bit behind most with her Kwoon training, but with her skill in the simulator it was likely her parents had taught her something for self defense. Jack, however, was very good in a fight.

A word of advice to the novice and naieve. Don't talk smack about a girl who just became basically the most important person in a black belt's life. It does not work out for you in the end.

He swiped at one at the ankle, palmed another's head like a basketball, toppling them both so that only his weight leaning on their heads against the wall was keeping them from falling, threw them aside like they were toys, and used a rising open palm to the chin of the one moving to attack him from behind his back. He didn't stop till he was crouched on the floor and his enemies were scattered.

They were bruised, and their pride was in tatters, but he'd taken care not to break bones or cause permanent damage. They would be in pain for days anyway.

He turned around and found himself faced with two crews, the Marshal, Tooth's family, and Tooth herself. The crews were openmouthed and wide eyed, save for an old dude in the back that was sizing him up like maybe he wanted some. The Marshal was unreadable, stern, and likely going to send him to the stockade. Tooth's parents were looking at the punks on the ground, expressions unreadable, and her mother all frostily distance and her father in a grimace that could have meant anything.

Tooth looked a little scared.

After that he felt no better than the Kaiju he fought and killed. He didn't dare look at Tooth again. He tried to take a step, but felt his legs give out under him. He fell to his knees and sighed as a woman ran up to his side and hefted him back to his bed in the wards.

All he could think about as he shut his eyes was Tooth, after giving him everything he never let himself want, would probably never let him within five feet of her again.

* * *

**Oh, I love that part where he lays down the law. :) That's Jackie-Boy. Inside and out. Wonder what will happen next time. Care to find out?**

**Reviews are wanted, please. **

**Thanks.**

**656 out.**


	9. Reveille

April 9th 2035

Shatterdome, Hong Kong

Jaeger Bays

1541

"Sir and I say this with all due respect, but it was really, really stupid putting those two into the bridge together."

Marshal Stacker Pentecost did not take well to being told he was wrong, especially after the fact, by non-combat personnel. The fact that it was their resident Kaiju expert, the frenetic and more than slightly foolish Newt "don't call me doctor" Geiszler only made that more unacceptable. He'd already caught flack from the combined crews of _Blue Winter _and _Cherno Alpha_, as well as the Kaidonovskys. Of those, only Ms Teerthankarovna's parents had anything resembling a leg to stand on.

Well, elements of _Winter_'s crew seemed to have been giving a report on the accident; it was hard to tell over the general chaos in his office at the time.

In any event, he was not about to take a dressing down from the least combat-ready person in the Shatterdome.

"Dr. Geiszler," he said with the irritated calm of beset administrators everywhere, "If you would get to the point of this impromptu meeting you called me away from already much delayed lunch to attend, then perhaps I may see clear not to investigate why you have half a Conn-pod's worth of pons equipment torn apart in a corner of your lab."

Newt just stared wide-eyed for a moment before his brain kicked back into gear, deciding to ignore that he had been found out until it became an issue.

"Alright," he began, "what we have here is a perfect storm of things that we have no handle on. The Jaeger is the test-bed for an experimental control system, and can only function properly when in concert with the original pilot. The pilot is the most heavily mutated case of Kaiju-blue exposure that actually survived, and he's been amnesic since he was inducted into the Jaeger program four years ago directly after his exposure. The tech girl you pulled to CP for him has no experience in combat, but you know what she does have, rumors about her because she was _Drifting in the womb_! And abnormal brainwaves, if our telemetry is to be believed. And all of this without a bit of oversight by the resident freak expert, _moi_."

"All right, you've made your point." The Marshal conceded, "Now what do we actually know about what happened?"

"Take a seat, we'll be here for a while" Newt dragged one out from under the desk for him, which he ignored. "Okay, suit yourself. Well, we need to start with Thomas Iceland. Not his real name, we have no idea of his real name. Prefers to be called Jack; that might be his real name we don't know. He's amnesic, has been since he was doused in Kaiju blood in an Oregon attack on a small city. Word got around of his exposure while he was in a healing coma, and the PhD's descended like vultures.

"Tests since show that he's developed clusters of neurons throughout his body, laced with the organic superconductor that Kaiju have in their nerves. As well as proteins that prevent freezing, and bones that changed over time to the organic carbon fiber lattice of Kaiju bone, as well as an increase in muscle mass, but its dense and lean so unless you can look under the hood, nobody can tell. His Junk DNA is something they've been studying for the past five years and we still have no idea of all of what the Kaiju Blue did to him. He does everything but bleeds blue and breathes ammonia. Take a look at this."

The scientist pulled a key boarded of the desk behind him, which he then sat on, and typed quickly before a holographic window coalesced between them. It showed a loop of the fight from earlier.

"This is the footage from this afternoon." he said.

"How did you get this?" the Marshal asked, suspicious.

"I have a dumb AI scanning the security footage tracking our boy there since he came in, for circumstances like these."

"Like what?" his superior asked, wondering how mad one of his two scientists had become.

"Kaiju-like behavior emergence." Newt asserted. At the unbelieving look he continued "On the surface, it's just a guy getting into a fight with an entire engineering crew over a girl. Tale as old as time. But wait."

He pulled up another window, this time showing the beetle-like Kaiju 'Mutavore' in Sydney fighting _Striker Eureka._

"At first glance there is not a lot of similarity between the two of them. But look closer. Both have split-second reaction times three or more times faster than any vanilla human, if you'll pardon the pun. Both react to stimulus outside of human visual range, but one with the assistance of multiple secondary eyes and the other without. He does not need to see an opponent to know it is there and destroy it. Anatomically, Jack has more than enough Kaiju secondary traits to justify the repurposing of _Meteor Epoch _into _Blue Winter _as a research project after it was scrapped fighting the Kaiju that exposed him. One will tell you that when he was in that fight he told his body to attack and it did everything else on autopilot, not that you could prove it."

"You think his combat record is because of his mutation." Pentecost stated, thinking about how best to keep control over a half-alien killing machine under his roof.

"Don't think. _Know!__Blue Winter _was constructed around Jack's theoretical ability to interface with it on his lonesome. That's why it fights with a cryogenic weapons system scaled up from an old Mark 1 the Chinese fielded, _Horizon Brave_. Only this time, the coolant is also routed into Conn-pod to activate the superconductors in his body and kick on all those little nexuses in his limbs, letting him spread the load of the Drift across himself. In theory. But the cold would kill his Co-pilot, and they were hesitant to perform a full test on the chance it would kill him, so they had this Jaeger all dressed up and never took it anywhere special. Just kept running tests on him periodically. _Blue Winter_, of course, is so optimized to run off of Jack, that he never experienced a full Drift with a Co-pilot. Until this morning."

Typing once again, Newt pulled up a series of windows, dismissing the old ones in favor of footage of the disastrous test this morning, along with several types of telemetry from the same.

"These readings show that Miss Tulika Teerthankarovna is not normal. By all accounts she should be the poster girl for the Jaeger program. The fact that she isn't shows just how stupid people can be without applying critical thinking skills. Born in the last of the good ol' days of the program, her parents were Teerhankar and Tutana Hegde, pilots of _Kali Armature_, a MK II out of India. Nothing unusual there, relationships between Rangers have always been encouraged to make Drifting easier. Except that her mother was in the cockpit through her pregnancy in a half-condoned experiment, and gave birth in _Kali _after her husband died. She herself died of a hemorrhage soon after. Tooth, our girl, was born into the Drift.

"As you know, after her parents died, the team they were assisting on that mission, the Kaidonovskys took her in. She grows up in the program, more or less. Trained in a little combat by here parents, trained a lot in mechanics by the crew. And she's cute. Really the whole package, but see there are these rumors. The ones that started that fight today. That the Drift messed her up, despite the fact she hasn't been in there since she was born. So nobody has ever looked at her too closely, at her parent's instance. That was a mistake.

"Medical records I pulled after the accident show unusual, persistent, gamma wave activity in her brain in conjunction with Jaeger proximity. I mean talking about them, seeing them, thinking about them, whatever, it sets off these abnormal readings. I don't know exactly what that means yet, but I can tell you what it did."

"About time, I was beginning to think you would never come to your point." The Marshal said, checking his watch to see how much of his time had been wasted.

"During the test," Newt continued, ignoring the boredom from his audience, "Tooth dived into the link between her and _Winter_ deeper than anybody ever had before, but still remained separated from Jack. It was only after she already was running half the machine that she reached for him in the Drift. That is straight up backwards from how it usually goes, but okay. It was workable. Things got out of hand when she began to go down the rabbit hole. That's also not uncommon in inexperienced pilots. What is unusual is that our Jack has no memories before the program. Eventually she comes upon those blank spaces.

"All of a sudden _Blue Winter_ lights up like a Christmas tree and Jackie-boy dives deeper than should be possible. Somehow he went straight through the motor-control AI and into the weapons control, which is where the cooling system was. That activates in what I can only guess is a defensive measure from the R&D program. All this time he's going into cardiac arrest, and the helmet was picking up huge areas of his brain activating for what was possibly the first time after his KB exposure in his memory centers. The girl, meanwhile, is having sympathetic arrhythmia and is taking the burden to keep them both alive.

"By the time their crew dragged him from within the AI, they'd come closer to dying in an activation test than anybody in 10 years."

"So you figured out what happened, what's your professional opinion on getting their machine working?" Pentecost asked, at this point just wanting the man to stop talking so he could get on with his responsibilities.

"You need me to oversee the next time they Drift."

**/**

Tooth couldn't get that fight out of her head, even hours later, especially with what she knew now.

She had walked past the medic wing an hour ago and saw Newt there chatting with the Marshal. The two seemed to be discussing Jack's fight. She had sidled up to see if any more disciplinary action was forthcoming for her partner. That was when she heard something she wished she hadn't.

_"...stimulus outside of human visual range, but one with the assistance of multiple secondary eyes and the other without. He does not need to see an opponent to know it is there and destroy it. Anatomically, Jack has more than enough Kaiju secondary traits to justify the repurposing of _Meteor Epoch _into _Blue Winter_..."_

After that she had booked it out of there as quietly as she could. Whatever Newt had been talking about, she didn't have enough information. But she did have access to a source that nobody but her knew about or could hide from her.

But how could that be possible? She sighed as she walked to Bay 7, the tiniest bits of fear gnawing at her inner stomach. The 'Penguin Crew' had left for the night, and _Blue Winter_ stood there in all his glory. She could sense an undertone of dread seemingly pulse from him. She silently walked to the Conn unit, and opened the door; once she was inside she shut the door, turned off his cameras, and just sat in the middle of the pod, breathing through her mouth in a meditative state.

*Hello!?* She called.

*Hello, I've been expecting you.* Came the reply.

Tooth gathered her breath.

*Do you know why I'm here?*

The response was a purr inside her mind. Tooth cracked a small smile. Jaegers mimic more than their pilot's fighting styles. If anyone but her knew that there was something like a consciousness in these colossal machines, they would see each Jaeger grow and change as pilots Drifted into their minds, growing as they did, and changing dramatically with each new pilot. She felt the pod charge with invisible energy, a cold breath entered onto the quite chamber of the pod.

*It all began such a long time ago… I was there when Jack was hurt, when he stopped being who he was and became who he is. There was a Kaiju. I won the battle, but I lost too. My pilots died. I had to become someone new too.*

Tooth bit her bottom lip in tension. _Winter_ was a bit cryptic it seemed. Maybe from whatever happened to it and Jack. It was so frustrating, she needed details!

*They made me different from what I was, because Jack was different. None of the other pilots fit with us. They could only Drift deeply enough to relieve his strain. No one was as good as he was, as we were together.*

She snorted. He was just like Jack alright. Arrogant. At least about some things.

*How did Jack fight like that?* She asked.

She grunted as she brought up the memory of him kicking the Tool-bags around the world and back. Twice. She felt a cooling sensation tinged with joy that she thought might have been the Jaeger's laugh.

*Sorry.*

She rolled her eyes but sat patiently as _Winter_'s joy tempered with knowledge.

*You're his partner. He fought where you could not. Jack fights like his bone and blood tell him to.*

Tooth looked up at that. She cocked her head in confusion, as _Winter_ continued.

*I was made a different Jaeger because Jack is different. Jack is what that Kaiju made him. The Kaiju taught him to fight, down to the core of him. He fights like they do.*

It took awhile for Tooth to process what had just been divulged. Jack learned to fight from a Kaiju? What? And before, he had Kaiju parts? She only ended up with more questions. She muttered in Russian under her breath, until she felt memories from _Blue Winter _pouring into her mind in a steady stream.

All of them were Jack and the machine performing incredible, if not insane, feats while the Co-pilot screamed in terror, marginalized in the bridge between the three of them. In each of them the Conn-Pod was cool, like during the failed test, and the Co-pilot was barely a shadow in the Drift. When Jack and She had Drifted, disaster though it was, because of her gifts she could handle the Drift with them, somehow. She added this new piece to her already rolling mind.

What were the chances of these two meeting someone who could do what she could? Was it something as clichéd as destiny or some silly thing like that which brought these two oddities of nature together? Maybe it was that there was no other place for people like them, with the other Shatterdomes closing. She sighed and pulled her legs to her chest as she rested her head on her knees.

She felt a soft prodding. She looked up, and knew _Blue Winter _wanted her to go to him. They had left things badly between them. She had to go to Jack. She rubbed her eyes of grit that had accumulated and began heading to the wards. While _Blue_ _Winter_'s concerned feeling turned into one of hope.

**/**

Jack was going crazy. He couldn't move, at all.

Camicazi, the doctor who rushed him here gave him strict orders to stay put. Apparently she had taken upon herself being his crew medic in the absence of one on his team. Which meant when he was injured she basically owned him. Getting into a fight while on rest orders mean he was going nowhere.

When he tried to sneak off, she put him in two pairs of handcuffs and bound his wrists to the bed. His nose itched furiously, and he could not reach to scratch where he slumped against the bent steel tube headboard.

He'd been there for who knows how long before he had visitors. Scary, Russian, Parental visitors. Tooth's parents and her former Crew Chief, to be specific. This would be fun.

As Aleksis Kaidonovsky glowered from the seat next to his bed, his wife Sasha stood with crossed arms and a detached expression. The huge older man whose name he never caught stood off by the door, looking bemused by all of them.

"You are the young man who pulled my daughter into a cockpit." the woman said with no small amount of vitriol. "But you also properly chastised those idiots in the hallway. That earns you some leniency for endangering Tooth."

Jack snorted, which actually prompted Aleksis to growl of all things.

"Look," Jack said, "you could keep playing around with me or you could say what you came for. I don't have the patience to deal with these kinds of games."

The heavyset guy in the back chortled at that, as the Russian couple shot him an annoyed look.

"We need you to understand what Tooth is to us." Aleksis said, deep and intimidating with his thick accent almost slurring the words. "You will protect her with your life in combat, we do not doubt this. But you must understand. Her life is yours. If you harm her it is worse than any other hurt she could be dealt."

"There is a reason why Jaegers have mixed sex teams. Their bond is not like that of family, and often turns to a relationship of one kind or another." Sasha continued, picking up where her husband left off. "They become close, dependent upon one another. This is the nature of things. Tooth has already started to depend on you. Our girl is not meant for battle."

"I think you may be surprised at what she is capable of." Jack retorted, annoyed at their lack of faith in their daughter.

"I have no doubt we will all be surprised." Aleksis replied, actually guffawing a bit. "But we will still worry. It is a parent's nature."

"You have nothing to worry about. Nothing is going to happen to her." Jack shot back annoyed.

"The accident today says differently." Sasha said, shutting him down. The boy on the bed became thoughtful.

"I... don't think that the accident will be repeated." Jack said quietly.

"And why not?" the woman pressed

"Because..." The boy hesitated, the sighed in resignation and continued, "Look, I don't know how much information about me you're cleared for, so I can't give you many details. Suffice to say I'm in the program because of my history with the Kaiju," he emphasized the point by shooting a look at his snowy bangs.

"I...see." the woman said, wondering where he was going with this.

"To that end, _Blue Winter _and I are unique in the program." He continued, just skirting classified information with his statements. "We have advantages that others probably don't, and as of now, all of them are devoted to killing monsters and keeping Tooth alive and well."

"And these 'advantages' are the cause of the accident this morning?" This from the old man near the door of the room.

"I don't know. Maybe." Jack conceded, " But I don't believe that that will be an issue."

"Why not," the old man pressed.

"During the Drift your daughter did something nobody else ever has. What, exactly I don't know. But she solved a problem that nobody else could, somehow. Whatever it was that happened, it will not happen again, ever."

Both parents looked at each other, their years living and fighting in each others heads showing with the ease they understood one another. They looked over to the man by the door, who just gave a reassuring nod, and then exited without sparing Jack another look.

The large old man lumbered up to him with a smile shining from under his beard.

"I am sorry, my friend." He began, "They worry, and so they must test you. You will never be good enough to protect Toothie to them, but even they would never be enough for them."

"It's cool. I'm kind of fuzzy on my parents, but they seem to do okay job with Tooth." Jack casually brushed off their brusque behavior.

"It is good you understand." the large man said "We have not been introduced, where are my manners? I am Nickolas St. North, Toothie's old teacher, mentor and boss." He offered a massive paw of a hand to shake, exposing what looked like a sleeve tattoo from under his jumpsuit.

"A legacy of my misspent youth." He explained as they shook, catching Jack looking.

"I'm Jack." the boy said. "So how is Tooth holding up, with everything?"

"Better than you or her parents." North replied with a smirk. "She is not so fragile as either of you make her to be, though very precious to us."

He looked the boy up and down.

"Do you know of her birth parents, what happened there?" North asked

"Only what's in the file they gave me when she was bumped to Ranger." Jack supplied.

"Is enough," the other man said, "Their family has always held that sword over their heads, that Aleksis and Sasha may not come back like her birth parents did. Now, they worry to loose her the same way. They will need time to learn to live with her circumstances. Just time." He nodded, softly, and made for the door.

"Thanks, for explaining things I guess," Jack petered out at the end kind of lamely

"Is no problem." the genial older man replied pausing in the door to add, "As a young man, many things do not make sense, because you have not learned enough to understand yet. Old men, they know everything, but young men don't listen when they tell them so. You, listen a little more than most. If you ever need some one to listen to you, then I am willing to talk. I think for one so young, you have had many burdens placed upon you. A friendly ear could in time of need can keep a foolish young man from being more foolish."

"Maybe I will..." Jack replied, wondering if it would come up.

"But before you go off spilling your guts to strange old men" North continued with a wink, "Maybe you should talk to the beautiful young lady who is supposed to be your partner, eh?"

And with that the batty old man was out the door.

Jack's eyes followed him out, with a bewildered look.

'Can my day get any weirder?'

His train of thought was cut, when he heard someone else walking to his pris- room. His room, the Doctor had nearly wrung his neck at him calling his new quarters a prison. At least it was cold.

* * *

_**Attention:**_

_**Next Chapter will be a Q&A discussion. If you have any questions you would like to have answered, please PM me and I will post your question and answer on the page.**_

_**Once again, Views and Reviews are wanted. Please don't be shy.**_

_**Thank you again.**_

_**656 out.**_

_**Apologies for the repost. It was the only way I could alert everyone fairly.**_


	10. Truth or Consequences

_**Attention**_

_**Attention.**_

_**This is a system wide alert to all Hong Kong, Shatterdome residents. **_

_**The Q&A Discussion shall be posted on **_**08/24/2013.**

_**All Inquiry requests must be submitted before then. **_

_**End of Notice.**_


	11. Truth & Consequences

Chapter 6

_RintinDestiny_

**Oh no why do these things happen to Jack?**

Just his dumb luck I guess.

_Zyber Elthone_

**What is Tooth's The Serpent based on?**

A Dimetrodon, a prehistoric lizard with a large sail on its back.

**Will Chapter 7 be a simple revamp with small changes like most of these ones, or is 7 scrapped and made from the ground up?**

Kinda both.

Chapter 7

_ShunKazamis-Girl_

**Where did u get the inspiration 4 this story?**

Well, I was leaving a midnight screening for Pacific Rim, and when I bunked that night I had watched Rise of the Guardians. That night I had the the dream of Tooth and Jack piloting a Jaeger against a Kaiju, while some of that amazing music was playing in the background.

**And do u think that Jack could handle the Jaegers in real life?**

Well let's see. Jack's very powerful, and he has great skills in a tight spot, but on the other hand he's also free-spirited which has both ups and downs. We will just have to wait and see, won't we?

_Guest 7/31/13_

**How is that even possible, and does this mean he gets ice powers as a human now?**

The Drift is practically a gateway to the impossible, and to the whole Jaeger. Jack would've tapped into the weapon systems as a gut reflex. It's his body telling him to go into combat mode, and prepare the Jaeger for the same. No he won't I'm afraid.

**And when do we get more history on the Jaeger Baby?**

Go to chapter 9, Reveille, for the official history.

Chapter 8

_Spartan416_

**Wait who draged Jack out of bed?**

Tooth.

Chapter 9

_KeepingThemAtBay_

**Also, do you realize that Pacific Rim takes place in Jan. 2025, not April 2035?**

Yes, I do. My Editor thought it better to have it take place in 2035, so both Tooth and Jack would be around the same general age.

_Cottonmouth25_

**Will the Jaegers lose the war because of this unwilling traitor? Or will they use him to penetrate the rift and bring victory to the human race?**

I guess you'll just have to see for yourself?

_Spartan416_

**Have you read the novel?**

No.

**Will there be an extra Kaiju in the hong kong battle since blue winter is in the shatter dome?**

We're trying to make new breeds for Jack and Tooth's brawls.

**What is the fate of cherno alpha?**

I'm afraid I cannot reveal that yet, as we have recently arrived at that point.

**Have you heard about the Drift hang over?**

No I haven't. Would you please tell me?

_FanFicCriTicTheThird_

**You enjoy wasting chapters don't you?**

I apologize, to you and everyone else. I had no idea I was wasting chapters. I'll try to stop doing that from now on. :)

PM's

_KeepingThemAtBay_

**I was a little confused about Tooth's appearance. You almost made it sound like she is actually a colored person. (That's at least how my, at times, jumbled brain determined it) is that really so?**

No, she isn't. Her physical discription is in Chapter 4, Call of Silence. Here.

_"Darkly tanned skin, lovely magenta eyes. And her short-cut hair; when it wasn't dyed carnelian, peacock and jade; was a rich chocolate brown."_


	12. Broken Bird

April 10th 2035

Shatterdome, Hong Kong

Infirmary

0800

"I'm sorry"

"What?" Jack asked. It was too early for this.

Tooth blushed and darted her eyes to a suddenly interesting blank wall of the infirmary room where Jack had been chained to a bed all night.

"I said I was sorry," she explained, "for getting you landed in here. You shouldn't have to fight my battles for me."

"That's not how this works." he said, shaking his head in bemusement "We're a team. Your fight, my fight: doesn't matter. We're a package deal. We are going to be essentially one person for hours at a time."

"Was that an intentional innuendo or do you just spout those things on reflex?" Tooth asked with a suspicious look.

"You know," Jack retorted heatedly, "You keep making all of these accusations against me, but I was being genuine just now and you come out with this kind of thing. I think you're projecting."

"Bah-wha-huh?" Tooth sputtered, incredulous "I am not a-a degenerate like you!"

"Please, _Your Majesty_!" Jack crowed, "All I did was check you out that one time and flirt a little when we had that tussle in the simulator to put you off your game. You're the one who bent it all out of proportion."

"I did not!" Tooth half yelled

"You did too!" Jack yelled right back, "You're cute, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? And occasionally a guy looks at a cute girl a little. That's all it was. And don't act like you don't know better now either. You were in my head. My intentions were within a reasonable limit."

"Fine." Tooth replied, sighing. "How did I come here to apologize and end up bickering with you?"

"You apologized for something dumb. I know what those guys said, I know what it meant. And the little baby Tooth made from the leftovers of the Drift told me what it meant to you. They hurt you, I hurt them. Simple as that. I expect you to return the favor, if it ever comes to that."

"Whatever." she muttered, somewhere between annoyed, relieved, and resigned. "At least we got our first fight out of the way."

"No way. That was not a fight." The boy disagreed, "It's not a fight until you have leverage. You have to be able to do some damage to the other party for it to count."

"That's stupid." Tooth snorted

"Look," Jack said in a reasonable tone, "have you ever seen a couple fight, like your parents or something?"

"No, not really." She replied looking just a hair confused.

"Bad example." Jack said, looking like he would be smacking his forehead if he wasn't chained down "Ranger couples don't argue, at least not out loud. They tend to work things out in the Drift."

"Really?" She asked, actually interested for once.

"Yeah, sure, whatever." Jack dismissed, clearly not as interested as her. "But if all you came to do was apologize-"

"Umm, actually," Tooth began, "I came to talk to you about something else too. About what those guys said, in the hall yesterday."

Jack just looked at her like she grew another head, which is pretty ironic all things considered.

"It's true." She finished, closing her eyes tight to brace for any forthcoming exclamations.

"Really?" Jack asked, not believing a word, "even that thing about you sleeping in the Conn-pod dock doused in grease thing that one guy I gave a broken nose to said, 'cause you don't seem the type."

"NO!" Tooth replied "Stop joking around! I'm being serious here!"

"Oh." Jack said, feeling like a jerk "Sorry. So what all..."

"My parents," she began, "My birth parents rather. They were Rangers, back in India. My mother was Drifting all the time, with me in her belly. It was an experiment or something. I don't know. When... they died, saving my mom and dad, that was the day I was born. My mother went into labor while still in the Drift. I was born right in the Conn-pod of a wrecked Jaeger, as my mother died of a hemorrhage in her brain."

Tooth had been tearing up slowly through her explanation. Now tears were silently drifting down the curves of her face. Jack was frozen as he was faced with the crying young woman, not knowing what to do.

"And the worst part is that it's true. I'm a freak!" She continued, very nearly sobbing now. "I hear voices! Like a schizophrenic! Jaegers talk to me! And I talk back!"

And she just broke.

Jack really wished he wasn't chained to the bed right now. He had never seen anybody that needed a comforting as bad as the girl sobbing into her hands in the chair next to his bed. And as things stood he couldn't do squat about it. Looking at where the handcuffs restrained his left arm to the bent tubing headboard he considered his options.

_Screw it._

And he pulled at his left arm, straining the handcuffs and the bed frame, figuring something had to give, allowing him to achieve his objective; i.e.: a comforting hug.

What gave was the cheap aluminum of the headboard, funnily enough. He was betting on the chain or hand. In any case: Hug achieved.

Jack couldn't help but wonder, as he held his partner one armed as she cried, how long had she though she was essentially crazy? She was clearly terrified of anyone finding out, and all of those things people said could only make things worse. What she needed was someone to understand.

"Hey," He said, as she started to lose steam, "You know, you're not crazy. Ask me how I know."

She leaned away from him a little, and Jack saw that she had passed the cute stage of crying at some point and was now a mess of runny makeup and puffy eyes. It was actually kind of endearing. Go figure.

"How. Do. You. Know?" She asked around breaths that were short and involuntary like a bad case of the hiccups.

"Because I'm weird too." He said with no shame whatsoever, he even managed to smile, though that may have been motivated by spite for his circumstances. "I was doused in that slime Kaiju have for blood when I was 15 or something. It did things to me. We can go into details later if you want.

"Important thing is that I can Drift, like really really well." By now Tooth was looking at him in a little bit of wonder, tears forgotten, "Well, if I'm frozen. I'm basically Mr. Freeze. But that means that I can't really Drift like everyone else, because I'm not like _anyone _else. My brain works different now.

"It really screwed up my memory too." Jack said with a wistful look on his face, before rallying himself. "But that's where the cool part is. Because, you fixed me. Don't know how, don't know why, but you did. Not all the way. But_ enough_.

"You gave me back my life." he said as he looked at her, tears in _his _eyes now, "Before yesterday; I had nothing from before the attack. Now I know I have a little sister out there somewhere. God, she must be nine or ten. Her name's Beth. And I can find her now. Because I met you. Before yesterday I was a _stupid kid _some eggheads decided to _weaponize_. Now I can maybe be a _real person _again, someday.

"So," he said, pulling her to him with his loose arm, holding her so tight she could swear she heard her bones creak, "You will never have to apologize to me. It's all forgiven. You will never, ever be alone as long as I live, because you have _me_. I'm on your side, always. There is _nothing _wrong with you, and if you need it I'll take on the world to prove it."

"Thank you." Tooth said as she slowly wrapped her arms around him. "Thank you so much. I was so alone in this."

"Not anymore. _Never again."_ He promised, before lightening his tone. "But could you do me one favor please?"

"What? Anything." She answered

"Help me unchain my other hand without collapsing the bed?"


	13. Ignition

April 11th 2035

Shatterdome, Hong Kong

OPS/ _Blue Winter_

1000

"So why do they call you the Penguin crew anyway?" Newt asked the stocky man who ran Blue Winter's small support staff, making small talk while waiting for the pilots to finish suiting up for the test activation today.

"You know that old joke about getting posted to Antarctica?" Skipper asked. When the scientist nodded gamely, he continued in a deadpan, "Not a joke."

Newt was going to press for details of what had to be a great story, when the detached Jaeger head dropped from the roof along its rails to mate with _Blue Winter_'s torso.

"Alright people look alive!" Skipper shouted as his team began the connection process. "We managed to dodge a bullet last time but Kowalski won't always be around to do some computer voodoo and pull our fat out of the fire. I run a tight ship, bipedal though it may be, and I demand of you nothing but the best! Furthermore-"

"Uh, Skipper?" Private interjected

"What!?"

"We're ready to initialize the Bridge"

"Oh."

"Alright boys, that means that now it's my show." Newt said as he stepped toward the nearest holographic pedestal. "Kowalski, Private, Give me the pilot telemetry. I'm talking alpha waves, bravo waves, gamma waves, and the whole neurological shebang. Rico, double-check the safety on weapons.

"Flight doc" he turned to look at the only female in the room, a tall, leggy Nordic blonde who introduced herself as Cami, "give me their EKG over here too."

After the displays came up he addressed the team again:

"Alright, last time you made one crucial mistake:" Newt asserted, ticking off Skipper something fierce, "you operated by the numbers. You assumed, which makes an ass of you and me, that your Rangers were normal. This is not your fault. This is the programs fault. I am here to correct that, now.

"So before we begin I will go over the modified procedure I briefed you upon." He continued, now every one was a bit annoyed by his condescension. "Item one: initialize pons equipment. Item two: activate TT/BW Bridge. Item three: activate TI/BW Bridge. Item four initialize TT/TI. Interval between operations to include full diagnostic between individual executions.

"Are we clear?" he asked, only to get disgruntled grunts in return. "Then let's begin."

**\**

It was different this time, in the Drift. Before they were very different, from each other and in a lot of ways from everybody else. This time, they had found their common ground, the foundation of their partnership.

He would protect her, and she would heal him. Neither was perfect. Tooth was inexperienced, and a little judgmental, and just a bit pushy. Jack cracked jokes to keep from crying and his... unique circumstances made him aggressive even for a 19 year old. But they got who they were underneath the flaws circumstance had put on them. That hard won understanding was what would keep them together, and drag their machine up to standing.

Her memories, seen through his eyes drew more and more of him out of himself, made him something like a whole. And for her, the union he shared with his Jaeger, deeper than any other team, was the most natural place in the world to be.

Like an alloy of imperfect metals, they were stronger together.

They would not break, even in the face of Armageddon.

They were _Blue Winter_, and they were ready for whatever came next.

**/**

April 18th 2035

1320

"Again." Sasha said, and Tooth dragged herself off the floor by her half-exhausted will than anything else.

Tooth was still in sorely need of remedial combat training. Jack was good, but she'd be handling half of Winter and the last thing anyone needed was a crappy fighter being pushed into combat and getting people killed.

They had taken in more recruits as Shatterdomes closed down. They didn't have enough Jaegers to go around, but they needed replacements in case a Ranger became a casualty. There was also a lot of competition to fill the open slot in _Gipsy Danger_, once that machine was up and running and the former pilot was dragged back by his ear. Nobody wanted to have to scab for a felled Ranger or worse, a team, but needs must. So, the Shatterdome was glutted with recruits.

Tooth getting her butt kicked by her 43 year old mother for two hours a day was something that impressionable recruits could never see. Rangers were an ideal to them, something to aspire to. It would cripple their development if they saw her picked above them, and then be substandard in combat. That is pretty much what happened, but circumstances dictated that outcome. Her training was, by agreement of the Marshall, herself, and her trainer, i.e.: her mom, to be done in isolation.

While she was training, she spent a lot of time with her mother in a storage room converted with surplus safety matting adjacent to the training facilities getting skill beaten into her like strengthening carbon into an anvil-forged sword.

It was not fun.

She felt a forming bruise from where she had landed on her thigh when Sasha had swiped her feet out from under her a minuet ago. She refused to back down, and everyone could hear 'again,' being said over and over from behind the shut door of the room, followed by a few cracks of wood on wood then a thud of one landing hard on the mats, followed by groaning and Russian curses that made even North blush.

Jack was watching after his own regular workouts, offering advice to both her and Sasha. Tooth would have rather he not see her a sweaty, tired, uncoordinated mess, but they needed the help. She got pointers on execution, her mother on the best direction for her training to take. And Jack was the expert, much like any other Ranger, on how to fight in his particular machine.

_Blue Winter _was very different from pretty much every other Jaeger.

It was a rebuild of a much larger machine, stripped down from _Meteor Epoch_. _Epoch_ had been a heavily armored missile platform full of ammo magazines. As a result it was rather bulbous and hunch-backed, with a thin endoskeleton everything hung off of.

That frame, the actuators in its limbs and the electronics were what was reconstructed into _Blue Winter_. The armor and the novel freezing system under it were more compact than most weapons and as a result _Blue Winter _was rather lanky; with overpower actuators and a large range of motion. Overall, _Blue Winter _was a contender for fastest Jaeger, and easily the most dexterous. It could sidestep and dodge instead of having to take the hits that Kaiju dish out, and it pretty much had to, or the lighter armor would crumple under heavy abuse.

This was important in that in an odd duck when it came to the techniques to operate it properly. While most of the training for the program focused on grappling, straight-up punches and a little ranged combat, _Winter_ needed an entire different skill set.

Under Jack's advice, Tooth had become very good at dodging. Most of her training was footwork and reaction time. She was getting faster than she'd ever been in her life, but her mother had hit her with her askrima sticks so often that she was sure she had hairline fractures in her forearms no matter what Camicazi said, and more purple and yellow-green bruises than regular tan skin showing.

Her mother took her sturdy stick and hooked it between her hands, behind her knee. The forward tug pulled her feet out from under her as her ligament lost tension, and her back and head slammed to the mat of the converting the floor of the converted storage room.

Still not quite fast enough.

"Again." Sasha said

**/**

During down time Jack and Tooth were pretty isolated. Usually individual crews spent a large amount of time together, between the language barrier and the inevitable blatantly nationalistic posturing. Rangers spent most of their time with their partners, a lot of their time with their individual crews, and a bit with other Ranger teams they got on with. It wasn't a matter of hard fast rules, so much as the simple social dynamics that worked themselves out.

Jack was here only for a few days and already he had gotten into a fist fight with _Striker Eureka_'s crew. He was winning no friends there. The Chinese contingents were inscrutable and kept to themselves. And things with Tooth's parents had been professional, polite, and very frosty the times he had reason to talk to them since their little interrogation.

Tooth herself had to deal with the issue of her change in station. Her old friends were a bit awkward around her, and the recruits were watching her to see why she was tapped to be a Ranger. The other pilots kept a respectable distance, as they had since Chuck hit on her and her dad dragged him out of the common room for 15 minutes, only to return pale and rather sickly looking. And her parents themselves were holding back a bit in a transparent effort to let her assert her independence in her new position.

And of course, there were the rumors. There always were. The aborted Drift hadn't helped anything either.

Really, it was probably just a matter of settling in. The rapid transitions were keeping things from achieving to any sort of stability. With a little time, her friends from her old crew would figure out how they felt about the whole thing and the awkwardness would end. The new rumors would die a slow, and hopefully painful, death. Things would become some sort of normal.

Life went on.

**/**

April 25th 2035

Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

Miracle Mile Temporary Demilitarized Zone

With the heavy lifting helicopter wing ascended on reflex as the explosive bolts securing _Blue Winter _released it cascaded into the ocean. Immediately the Jaeger was frosted as the mist of droplets flash froze on contact with its armor, only to crackle off as it began to stride forward.

The airlift was an indeterminate period of strung out boredom for the two Rangers in the cockpit, as the rush of adrenaline from their scramble into the Conn-pod when they had first been alerted to the emergent Kaiju inbound for Indonesia tapered off into dregs.

Tooth was particularly antsy, fidgeting in her harness in a mix of anticipation and nerves. Jack was positively mellow by comparison, having sortied five times before, with four kills to his name.

As _Cherno Alpha _hurled up a massive impact shock behind them, their satellite uplink, tectonic sensors from a round the region, and sonar from Military vessels near the area located the massive dragon they were here to slay.

"_Winter_, _Cherno_; you are currently on the continental shelf a mile and a half off the coast of Port Moresby." Skipper's voice came over the joint comms, "We have Category 4 Kaiju designated Hellbender detected incoming off the coast. ETA is two minutes. Good luck and Godspeed."

In _Winter_'s cockpit Tooth and Jack were running through the start-up procedures for the Jaeger's armaments, compressing the already insanely pressurized inert gasses held in cylinder reservoirs in the limbs and torso, preparing to freeze the surrounding water to ice in combat.

As a thought passed through their collective mind, Tooth opened a haptic interface window showing the split-screen pilot view of their partner in this engagement while Jack fiddle with the controls for the armor radiators. One thing about the Drift was, it did wonders for your ability to multi-task.

"Mom, Dad?" Tooth asked, in blatant disregard for any communications discipline, "Can you hang back a bit in the fight?"

Her parents shared a look that was rendered moot, redundant, and patently ridiculous by the combination of their shared drift and the rather medieval faceguards of their interface suits.

"Tooth, are you sure?" her father asked, his voice typically gruff, but with an edge of concern, "A Kaiju is like nothing you have seen."

"I'm sure." Tooth said, selling the point with the force of both her and Jack's conviction. "_Blue Winter _is an unknown. So are both of us, especially me. If we're going to get anywhere we need to show we can pull our weight. That happens now."

"Fine, Terenka, go." Her mother said with resignation, "We will hold back to give you your chance. Do not die for foolish pride."

Tooth closed the line of communications and sighed into her helmet.

"Yeah, here's hoping." She said wryly.

The two goliath machines continued toward the incoming beast churning the ocean into a rising froth. The slender blue machine was leading by a few strides.

"Are you ready?" Jack asked, one last belated time

"Born ready." Tooth shot back with a cheeky smile that showed off her dimples.

"Nice!" Jack barked out, half laughing.

Together the two of them ducked the Winter down into a crouch, the armor of its forearms expanding to allow the seawater to flow into a cavity within. An instant of beyond freezing gas vented within crystallized in each an icicle the size of a radio tower, mounted within the armor along the top of the arms.

When the disturbance in the water reached them it diverted around the two machines, trying to circumvent them to reach the city. The Kaiju seem reluctant to engage, something of a rarity, so Jack decided to take the initiative.

Pouncing with one arm extended and the other cocked back in a ready position, they crashed onto the turbulence in the shallows, swinging one icicle-wielding arm around wide to wrap around the bulk of whatever it was and pulling it thrashing from the water, tossing it onto a submerged sandbar. Consequently, they got their first look at the thing.

Hellbender was quite possibly the only Kaiju Jack had ever seen that didn't have bony armor on its head. It was long and thin mostly like a smooth skinned crocodile. Its head was a shot and wide rounded chevron that extended well beyond its neck on both sides with tips each extending into hoary bone or horn spikes with bioluminescent light escaping along the edges. The low width of it was filled with a line of tiny glowing blue eyes that paralleled the leading edge where teeth like needles interlaced from either side of its maw. Its body was smooth, nearly frictionless, and its back and sides where speckled with bioluminescent spots that burst and oozed glowing blue once out of the water. For limbs it had eight flippers at something close to regular places along its bloated torso, each feathery along the back and ending with a heinous claw like a mantis. Finishing its body was an unusually long tail lined top and bottom with razor sharp plates of enamel, in a rough fan shape.

"Well this is a little different." Jack commented. As he tried to skewer the thing through its flat rounded torso.

"Really? Tooth asked as the gaping jaws of the thing tried to latch onto the arm as it slithered like a sidewinder and the ice spike embedded itself in the sand until it seemed to catch fast. "What's so odd about it? Seems like any other Kaiju I've seen."

"No idea." Jack said to Tooth as she beat the beast about the neck and first set of shoulders with the side of the left icicle, the length of the weapon making stabbing the thing too difficult while it was latched on. "But stay frosty. Some of these guys have tricks besides smashing us."

"Oh, you did not just say that!" The Kaiju had taken a bit of a beating and a few shallow slashes, and its teeth, though sharp, hadn't done enough to make hanging on worth it. It released the arm it had and flailed its tail wildly at their head to distract he two of them. "I'll leave staying 'frosty' to you, ice man. I've been doing all the work since you lodged that ram into the ground!"

"Just letting you get your shots in." Jack taunted, as he shattered the ice spike pinning his arm to the ground with little effort, and raised the arm to shoulder height while prompting tooth to guide the other to support it from the elbow. "As for staying cool, watch the master!"

Thought the sharp tip was broken off, the rest of the icicle still knocked the regrouping Kaiju for a loop when it impacted its oddly shaped skull.

"Good one!" Tooth shouted, really getting into the spectacle of the battle. "My turn!"

The other arm was raised and braced, and the massive frozen javelin clipped the torso near the back, digging a bit into the side and tearing off one of the middle flippers on the right side completely. Biohazard blue blood gushed from the wound, mixing with the brightly glowing slime that had been flowing form it's back the entire fight, coating _Blue Winter_'s arms and floating in a sticky, sickly film on the surface of the water.

In fact, the seemed to be surrounded by a ring of the gunk.

"Damn it!" Jack cursed, his realization hitting Tooth a millisecond later, and both of them pulling back. They were too slow, however, as the Kaiju writhed and twisted, spewing the glowing fluid in long snotty ropes flying through the air, surrounding and coating their Jaeger.

That wasn't the bad part. The bad part was when the thing passed an electric arc between the spikes on the side of its head and the tip of its tail. Not a large one when the scale was considered, but enough to ignite the slime on the water and to risk Winter as the flames crept closer.

Tooth was near panic when Jack's prompting took them in a rolling dive over the ring of flame behind them, dousing _Blue Winter _to put out the surface fires as the Jaeger landed in a kneel.

"_Cherno_, tag in!" Jack shouted into his helmet, and the other Jaeger menaced forward to keep the Kaiju off of them for a moment.

"Take it easy," Jack said to his partner as she struggled to reign in her temporary panic. He punched away at the center console, redirecting the internal coolant. "We need a moment to set this up anyway."

"Set up what?" Asked Tooth, as her heart rate stabilized a little watching _Cherno _give the speedy animal something to dodge or face the consequences.

"Remember the secondary armor?" Jack asked, challenging her to forget, with her purported expertise in all things Jaeger (outside combat at least). She nodded, understanding.

"You think it will be enough?" She asked, using her side of the console to activate the external radiators.

"That napalm gunk is nasty."

"Only one way to find out." Jack shrugged, and then continued, "We'll need to get back in there or your folks will finish without us."

Outside, _Blue Winter _was standing in the shallows, the thin fins fitted within the slots of its armor extending and rotating out from its body. Frigid gassed passed within the extensions, and the humid tropical air turned bitter cold, drawing a thick mist that not even the nearby inferno could drive away. The machine at the source of it was frosting over, first on the legs as seawater froze solid, thicker and thicker, then the fog itself condensed and froze solid. After a scant few moments, the ice covered the entire machine, fused solid and thick enough to cover the massive radiator fins within the armor. When all was quite solid and the glacial mass changed the silhouette form that of a proverbial beanpole to a hulking neck less brute, a faint rumbling sound came from within the froze bulk. Along every seam and joint in the armor plates ice saws and drills and milling blades of ridiculous scale ground the ice into shape, freeing the giant to move before withdrawing under the metal plates. Only its hands were free of the ice, and their size was made to fit this larger frame, though they looked over large without all of the glacial armor.

"Switching over visuals to active sonar" Jack announce, hitting a short sequence of buttons on the console that opaqued the sapphire-matrix window and brought up the appropriate sensors to let them see through 20 feet of ice encasing the head.

"I can't believe how long that took." Tooth complained, wanting to get back to monster pummeling and irritable from the cold. Also, she wanted her parents' away form the pyromaniac thing, just a little. "And all those edging tools, this is so inefficient!"

"Don't knock it till you've tried it, Majesty." Jack teased as the dragged the now much heavier Jaeger back into the fray. "All this extra bulk hits like the iceberg that sank the Titanic."

"Winter is more than big enough to sink it by itself." She retorted, mostly to be contrary. That took real effort and a bit of talent while you were mind-melded with someone.

"Whatever," Jack rolled his eyes. "_Cherno_, _Winter_'s ready for round two. You ready for a break?"

"Da, roger that _Winter_." Aleksis's gruff baritone came over the comm. as _Cherno_ proceed to throw a powerful cross the crumpled Hellbender's wide jaw along near half its length. "Its good to see that little tussle didn't keep you down. We've shattered the horns it used to make the spark. Should make it a little easier for the children."

Jack just snorted at the ascertain, while Tooth made a note for future petty vengeance against her father.

Heavily encumbered as it was, _Winter_ was now even larger than _Cherno Alpha_, with massive weight to throw behind its blows and armor thicker than the machine inside in many places. But that came with a trade off for speed. The Kaiju was fast, but if they got in a solid hit the thing was alien chutney.

The fire was down to a few smoldering spills now, but the glands on its sides were still stolen and glowing bright. They had to catch it before it caused another firestorm, otherwise their armor would shatter like sugar glass under its own weight.

"Jack I have an idea." Tooth announced, and then pushed the details through the forefront of her mind where they would be easier to understand. It was unspoken that just reading each others mind about everything would be rude and invasive and way too awkwardly intimate for them while a fight was going on, but when prompted they could dig a little deeper than the motor control they constantly shared to control their Jaeger. It was more or less considered polite to wait for prompting to read your partner's mind deeper than you did by default.

"Gotcha" He agreed, and they both bent into a runner's crouch and pushed forward like a charging bull, bearing down on the great animal. The Kaiju dodged nimbly to the side and doused them with its goo, but they managed to keep it from lighting on one of the remnant flames. Still, _Winter_ Stumbled onto its stomach, face in the water

Seeing the larger of its enemies down, it pounced like a jungle cat to try and finish it. Its clawed fins scrabbled to grip the ice as it gnawed with the needle teeth on the intact side of its jaw and its fang-frilled tail whipped against _Winter_'s impervious armor randomly.

This only went on for a short moment, before _Winter_ flipped onto its back sideways, carrying its attacker with it and catching the thing between itself and the seafloor. Reaching near its waist, _Blue Winter _caught the flailing tail of the pinned monster and righted itself without letting go.

"Whooh!" Tooth hooted in exaltation, "It worked! My plan totally worked"

"Don't get a big head." Jack countered as they dragged the thing over to _Cherno Alpha _so they could share the beating "The thing's about as smart as a house cat. It's not a huge deal to outsmart one."

"Apparently you've never had to get a cat in a kennel. I've still got scars." Was all Tooth felt she needed to say to end the argument. Jack let the petty argument go, as he was often doing these days, on the grounds it was not worth the effort. He knew he was right, and even if she thought she won, he won by not putting forth all the effort to win only for her to be mad at him for making her wrong. It was a win-win, except for her slowly inflating ego.

She snorted at the irony of that though and shot him a look, as they held the Kaiju down for her parents to pummel like it owed them money.

Mid-drift arguments were weird.

Welcome to the new normal.

* * *

**The Kaiju's head design was similar to those giant prehistoric salamanders, and the name is taken from an American giant salamander breed. It also excreted flammable goo, which makes it also an elemental salamander. **


	14. Honor Code

April 28th 2035

Shatterdome, Hong Kong

The Wards

2123

Tooth groaned and grumbled as she dragged her half-awakened carcass all the way to her bunk. She had to spend a whole night inside _Blue Winter_'s harness as the cargo helicopters flew them and _Cherno_, to home.

She gingerly touched a hand to her stomach and nearly felt her meal from two days prior surface as slush on her tongue. She forced it back down, but groaned all the same. She had been thrown around like a rag doll for the better part of 8 hours. She stole chance looks at Jack when they hit smoother weather and was utterly befuddled. He was asleep. Asleep!

Of course she couldn't be sure of it, he just seemed peaceful as he leaned back in the harness. When they had landed he rose, and stretched with a mighty growl, as if he'd slept in luxury bed instead of a Jaeger harness. He had instantly greeted her with a chipper tone, and set about work as usual as she clambered to her feet.

Which led to now, as she lumbered her way to her sweet bed and bathroom that she had been dreaming, somewhat, about for the past few hours.

She heard voices up ahead, and recognized them as the Australian crew that Jack had utterly pummeled single handed. It was an added embarrassment for them that he had been recovering from a aborted Drift sequence. This led to animosity against Jack, and anyone who remotely was close to him. Making Tooth public enemy number one. This also didn't help with building any kind of friendship with the crews.

Tooth shook herself out of her mental rambling, and centered her focus on the problem at hand, Jack was nowhere near to save her this time. She saw an open door and ducked in at once. She pressed her ear against the solid steel and sighed quietly at hearing the thick accents pass. She rubbed her arms. She had been so worried about being attacked that she didn't notice the room's difference in temperature compared to the outside. She bumped against a desk, and fumbled for a lamp switch.

She gripped it and clicked it into the 'on' position. The room was absolutely Spartan. A traditional sleep mat and pillow were strewn on the floor from her fumbling, the rest of the room was bare save for the desk and light.

She noticed several papers strewn over it and picked one up.

"_A wish is something you wait for, a dream is something you will fight for." _

She looked through them all. They were all written in the same beautiful script, and all on the same worn out paper. From what she could tell they all seemed like scratch pieces. One was written on a napkin, another on a notecard, and countless others scrawled along the walls.

She went rigid upon realizing she was in someone's actual living quarters. She was about to beat a hasty exit, when something halted her.

There sitting on a hollowed out shelf sat two tablets. Stone Tablets. She half-expected the Ten Commandments, but was surprised when she read the first one.

_ "No excuses. Waste of breath and total bull."_

Her eyes traced over all the words written on those two blocks.

_ "Turn away from saying useless speech._

_ When you stand firm make sure your feet are in the right place._

_ Forgive your enemies, but take advantage of their mistakes."_

And so, and so on. The last one drove it home to her.

_ "You are in control."_

She traced her fingers over the words painstakingly carved into the granite. She froze when she felt a familiar hand on her shoulder.

"Good evening Tooth."

Jack whispered to her.

Two and two came together in Tooth's mind.

Jack's room. She was in her co-pilot's room. Tooth gulped out of reflex, something told her she was in for a much harsher night than being tossed around in a Jaeger. That would've been the luxury right now.

Tooth spun around and began starting to apologize, but she could only get half-way before tumbling over her tongue and starting over again with impossible speed. Then suddenly she stopped.

She wondered what was keeping her from speaking, and looked down to see one of Jack's cold fingers pressed gently yet firmly against her. She looked up to him and saw him smiling.

"Toothie, just stop."

He smiled to her, and all felt right with the world. At her easing Jack withdrew his hand with equal quickness as when he applied it. She bobbed her head to him and was about to leave, when Jack's cold fingers tapped her shoulder again.

She looked back and he gestured her to follow. They walked up to what Tooth thought was a wall, until he tapped a certain spot and it fell away to reveal a small room. She walked in after him and was utterly flabbergasted.

There against the back wall was a Samurai suit of armor. She walked up and touched it gently. She looked back to him confused.

"When I was in the Hospital I read about the Ronin from Japan's feudal era, over time that's who I became. A lone warrior."

He joked, putting emphasis on the 'lone warrior,' part. She rolled her eyes only slightly. She had fought with and beside him, she knew he had true power to be something greater than any Ranger in the program.

She then noticed a scroll on display. She turned to it. He walked up beside her.

"These are the principles I live by everyday."

They were written in Japanese, but before she could ask he began listing them off.

"Yuki, Courage, Jin, Benevolence, Rei, Etiquette, Makoto, Honesty, Gi, Rectitude, and Meiyo."

She looked up at him.

"The sum of all six. Honor."

She smiled at him and realized she was still holding his hand, she wanted to let go but this coolness felt right for some reason. Jack squeezed her hand gently.

"Now you know who I am through and through."

He walked her out like a gentlemen, and just before she left to her room he spoke up again.

"Next time you want to stop by, know you're invited."

He smirked at her and shut the door.

She smiled happily to herself as she reached her own bunk. She might just have to take him up on that offer.

* * *

**I'm back.**


	15. Category 5

April 29th 2035

Pacific Rim, Pacific Ocean

"The Factory"

000

There was a roar of incomparable fury from deep within the portal in the Pacific. An alien was pacing back in forth at what appeared to be the controls of a much larger machine. He was utterly frustrated. His first 'Hunter' Class beast had been destroyed.

He walked up to the controls and pulled out a few crystal spikes. Instantly an image began to play across a large screen of what appeared to be living flesh. It showed his beast fighting a newer machine developed by the Oomans. He pushed in one crystal to pause it, and observed the Machine in closer detail. Nothing he had in his present arsenal could match this weapon in agility and weaponry.

He was so engrossed he did not notice his commanders approach him, until he turned. He bowed out of respect, but his fury was still etched into his body. His superiors asked him the cause of this and he pointed angrily at the new Machine the Oomans had developed.

He threw up his arms in frustration, and returned to pacing, while they examined the genetic footage. This new development, could permanently halt their 'Cleansing' processes. He needed to make something stronger. Something the Oomans had never witnessed before. He had to. That accursed Machine had cost him his best. He relished to return the favor. Then it occurred to him. 'Why not kill two birds with one stone?'

He walked into the 'Archives,' an ancient structure that housed every genetic sample they had developed and searched for the vial he wanted. Upon finding it his eyes gleamed brightly as he collected the tube.

When he reentered, the Commanders were surprised. Why had he chosen a fallen 'Predator' Class beast from times long past? He in turn pointed out that this animal he held was the best key they had to obliterating that Machine, without delaying their arrival anymore.

He put the tube into the large machine, and then jabbed a needle into his own arm. Slowly his blood poured down into another tube to the basin where it would mix with the vial's contents. The two fluids mixed in the large basin, and slowly, a embryo began to form.

The last of his creations had been the last piece he had of his biological family, now he wanted vengeance. He stood boldly in front of his creation as it slowly took shape, feeding off its Master's blood. His Superiors were slightly unsettled by the fact one of their Manufacturers had created a 'Predator' Class beast without their express permission.

But none dared to voice this as six red eyes opened wide to its maker. He lifted up his arms in triumph, at its successful conception. This beast would be his roar of vengeance, his power of death, they were now one. He gripped the needle in his arm and tore it out in his anger. His beast had 'fed' enough, now it needed to 'learn.' His arm began the healing process without so much as a scratch left as he began filling its DNA with all he could on the Machine it would be sent after to destroy.

The Superiors left, but one turned and warned that if his 'Predator' failed he would suffer the consequences. He roared angrily at him, but the older being seemed unfazed by his wrath and quietly departed.

He looked back to his creation the fury in its eyes would make that Machine tremble. Now he had to wait. The moment it was complete, he would free it from his world, and unleash it on the Ooman's world. Together they would crush the Ooman's base, and destroy every last one of their Machines, especially the one called

'_Blue Winter.'_

* * *

**The End, for now.**

**End Book 1.**


	16. Hong Kong Shatterdome News Update

Attention please!

Attention!

Second book has been started under the code name:

**Initiating Launch Operations.**

That is all.

Thank you.

And to whomever took the 'L' from _Striker Eureka _crew's motor pool sign, ha-ha we are all very amused.


	17. CANCELLATION NOTICE

Due to some very nasty remarks about my story, writing style, and several other personal factors, I am hereby nullifying both of my crossover stories. **When** and **if** I want to start writing again, I will start a new story.

This time however I will pray you people who have been 'disappointed' will be better pleased. (Sarcastic.)

656 over and out.


	18. News

New story is;

Rise of the Jaegers


End file.
